Delhi Police Remove Sonam Wangchuk From Jantar Mantar on Day 21 of NEET Hunger Strike

In the early hours of Saturday, July 18, 2026, Delhi Police — a number of them in civilian clothes — moved into the protest site at Jantar Mantar and removed Sonam Wangchuk, the 59-year-old Ladakhi engineer and education reformer, from the cot where he had been fasting for three weeks. He was shifted to VMMC and Safdarjung Hospital in south Delhi amid heavy police deployment, sloganeering from supporters, and chaos at a protest site that had become one of the summer's most visible flashpoints.

By Saturday evening the hospital described his condition as weak but stable, requiring continuous monitoring after prolonged fasting. But the manner of his removal, and what happened inside the hospital, ensured the story did not end with his admission.

What Happened

Wangchuk was on the 21st day of an indefinite hunger strike when police acted. Officials said the shift was carried out on medical advice and in compliance with directions from the Delhi High Court, which had been monitoring the situation and mandated daily health checks given his deteriorating condition. Police maintained they were executing a court-sanctioned duty to preserve his life, not suppressing a protest.

His physical state had become precarious. Wangchuk had reportedly lost between 8 and 9 kilograms over the course of the fast, with his blood pressure recorded around 109/70. Doctors flagged signs of dehydration and metabolic abnormalities consistent with a prolonged fast in a man approaching 60.

A Protest About NEET, Not Climate

It is essential to be precise about what this fast was for, because Wangchuk's public identity invites easy misreading. His hunger strike, begun on June 28, was in support of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) movement — the Gen Z-led campaign founded by Abhijit Dipke — demanding the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over the NEET-UG paper leak. This was a protest about examination integrity and ministerial accountability, not about climate change or, on this occasion, Ladakh's constitutional demands.

That distinction matters. Wangchuk has in the past fasted over Ladakh's statehood and Sixth Schedule demands, and he is globally associated with environmental innovation. But the Jantar Mantar sit-in of the summer of 2026 was squarely tied to the students' campaign, and conflating it with his other causes misrepresents both him and the movement he joined.

Inside The Hospital

The removal did not end the standoff; it relocated it. Hospital authorities said that even after admission, Wangchuk refused intravenous fluids, oral rehydration solution and other medications, despite the documented signs of dehydration and metabolic disturbance — continuing his fast in a hospital bed rather than a protest tent.

His wife, Gitanjali, alleged a lack of transparency at the hospital and questioned the need for the hospitalisation at all, saying there had been "no need" to bring him in and calling for his discharge. Her intervention turned a medical bulletin into a fresh dispute over consent, autonomy and the state's authority to physically intervene in a hunger strike.

The core tension is old and unresolved in Indian law: when does the state's duty to preserve life override an individual's right to protest with his own body?

Who Is Sonam Wangchuk

Wangchuk is one of India's most recognisable public figures in education and grassroots innovation. A Ladakhi engineer, he is best known internationally for the ice stupa — artificial glaciers that store winter water as towering cones of ice, releasing it for high-altitude farming in the dry spring months. His work in reforming schooling in Ladakh made him a household name, and he is widely cited as an inspiration for the character Phunsukh Wangdu in the film 3 Idiots.

That reputation is precisely why his participation transformed the CJP protest. A satirical students' movement gains a very different kind of legitimacy when a figure of Wangchuk's moral standing lies down beside it and stops eating. It is also why his forced removal became national news rather than a routine clearing of a protest site.

The Political Fallout

The Congress, which has led the parliamentary demand for Pradhan's resignation, urged Wangchuk to end his fast even as it vowed to keep pressing the political demand. K.C. Venugopal's appeal sought to protect the activist's health while claiming the cause for the party's own campaign inside Parliament. The CJP, for its part, attacked the government over the removal, casting it as an attempt to silence a peaceful protest by administrative means.

Police cleared the protest site after Wangchuk was taken away, effectively ending the physical sit-in even as the demand it carried moved into the Monsoon Session of Parliament, which opens on July 20.

By The Numbers

• 21 days — the length of the hunger strike when police intervened.
• 8–9 kg — the weight Wangchuk had reportedly lost.
• 109/70 — his approximate recorded blood pressure.
• June 28 — the day the fast began, in support of the CJP's NEET demand.
• 59 — his age.

What Comes Next

The immediate medical question is whether Wangchuk will accept treatment or continue refusing it, a decision that will determine how long the hospital standoff lasts and whether the courts are drawn in further. The political question is whether his removal galvanises the NEET accountability campaign or defuses it by taking its most prominent face off the street.

Either way, the government has, for now, ended the visible protest without conceding the demand — a familiar outcome in India's long history of hunger strikes. What remains unresolved is the grievance that put a 59-year-old educator on a cot at Jantar Mantar in the first place: the belief, shared by lakhs of students, that the country's most important entrance exam was compromised and that no one at the top has been held to account.