Delhi High Court declines to shift Sonam Wangchuk out of Safdarjung Hospital
Days into a hunger strike that has now stretched past three weeks, the Delhi High Court declined to shift Sonam Wangchuk to a hospital of his choice leaving his family's claim that his consent and his choice of treatment were never truly his own, unresolved.
Published on: 20 July 2026, 03:23 am
YESTERDAY, the Delhi High Court refused to pass an interim order to discharge Sonam Wangchuk from the Safdarjung Hospital and choose a hospital of his own choice. It noted that the activist’s forcible removal from the protest site at Jantar Mantar and his subsequent shifting to the hospital did not amount to an arbitrary action.
Justice Mini Pushkarna, who heard the matter, observed that the final call on assessing Wangchuk’s medical condition would rest with the medical team attending to him. The matter has now been listed for further hearing on July 24.
Background
Since June 6, Jantar Mantar in New Delhi has been the site of protests demanding the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over the 2026 NEET paper leak, along with broader reforms in the conduct of public examinations. Activist Sonam Wangchuk began an indefinite hunger strike at the site on June 28 which drew progressively larger and more diverse crowds, including senior citizens, social organisations, and members of opposition parties.
On the morning of July 18, on Wangchuk’s 21st day without food, personnel identified as belonging to the New Delhi district’s Special Staff and local police entered the barricaded protest zone in civil clothes, and along with Rapid Action Force and Central Reserve Police Force, screened off Wangchuk with large white sheets and then lifted him from the stage before escorting him out of the site.
The Deputy Commissioner of Police (‘DCP’), Delhi then informed that “on expert medical advise due to the deteriorating health condition,” of Wangchuk, he had been shifted to the hospital for essential medical care.
Earlier a Division Bench of the High Court’s Chief Justice D.K. Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia passed an order on July 16 directing that Wangchuk’s medical condition be regularly monitored on daily basis and depending on the opinion of the doctors whatever medical intervention is required to check his deteriorating health condition, shall also be taken.
On July 19, Wangchuk’s wife, Gitanjali Angmo, took to social media to say that she had “lost faith in Safdarjung Government Hospital” (where he was taken by the State) and had moved the High Court for an urgent hearing, seeking permission to shift him to a hospital of their own choosing before his condition worsened further. In her post, Angmo asserted that the hospital had earlier informed the family that Wangchuk’s potassium level had fallen to 2.9 (when it was 4.3 the previous day), which was dangerously low. She said that after ten hours and several requests, the family was finally given a blood sample at 10:30 p.m., and that an independent lab test on that sample came back at 3.5, well within the normal range.