Sonam Wangchuk's Wife Accuses Delhi Police of Defying Court's Order

NEW DELHI — The wife of Sonam Wangchuk, the climate activist and education reformer who has spent more than three weeks refusing food outside India's Parliament, accused authorities on Saturday of overstepping a Delhi High Court order by hospitalizing her husband against his wishes.

Speaking outside Safdarjung Hospital, where Mr. Wangchuk was taken early Saturday, his wife, Gitanjali J. Angmo, said the court's directive had called only for regular monitoring of his health — not confinement in a hospital. The order simply required that his health be checked periodically, she said, and stopped short of mandating hospitalization, meaning the move did not conform to what the judges had actually ordered. She added that no treatment was currently being administered, only observation and testing, and that the family intended to have those results independently verified at an outside laboratory.

Delhi Police, for their part, framed the transfer differently. A post from the office of the Deputy Commissioner of Police for New Delhi said the move was made under the High Court's orders and on medical advice, citing Mr. Wangchuk's worsening condition, and said officers exercised restraint after protesters tried to obstruct the operation, resulting in a brief scuffle.

Ms. Angmo has emerged as her husband's most visible advocate over months of legal battles. On social media, she said nothing should be given to him by mouth or intravenously without consent from her, his family, or the doctors who had monitored him over the previous twenty days. She also disputed hospital figures on his condition, saying his potassium level had been measured at 4.3 the day before, not the lower reading of 2.9 that had circulated.

Despite the hospitalization, Ms. Angmo made clear the protest movement would not pause. She said a planned march to Parliament on July 20 was still going ahead, arguing that reforming the education system was the government's responsibility and that their role was to make clear the system had broken down entirely. She framed the campaign as reaching beyond its original trigger — an alleged leak of exam papers for a national entrance test — into a broader reckoning over education policy, saying the effort was meant to stir the country's conscience, which she believed it had already done to a significant degree.