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Supreme Court to review speech translations in jailed climate activist Sonam Wangchuk's case
The case circles procedural issues in Sonam Wangchuk's detention and claims of misrepresentation of his speeches that allegedly incited violence in Ladakh.
The Supreme Court on Monday questioned the Centre over the veracity of the translated version of speeches by the jailed climate activist Sonam Wangchuk and ordered the original pen drive supplied to him upon his arrest in September 2025 to be produced by Thursday.
The court’s order came at the penultimate day of the hearing in the matter filed by Wangchuk’s wife Gitanjali Angmo seeking his release on the ground of procedural lapse by the authorities in denying him grounds of arrest and his claim that his speeches delivered over the past few years have been distorted to suggest that he instigated the violence in September last year that killed four people and injured hundreds.
The bench of justices Aravind Kumar and PB Varale observed this “variance” as it said: “What is there in the speech, there should not be any variance. The petitioner and the state may differ on interpretation but we have to be ad idem on the text of the speech.”
“The translation (provided in English by the detaining authority) goes for 7-8 minutes but the speech (in Ladakhi) is for 3 minutes where he says stop the violence...We are in an era of artificial intelligence. Precision is only 98%, at least for translations,” it said.
Sibal told the court that some of the statements attributed to Wangchuk are not there in the tabular chart presented by the detaining authority in court. “This is a unique detention order. You rely on something that does not exist,” he said.
The bench said: “We want an actual transcript of speeches. We find that what is in your (Sibal) text and what they (authorities) refer to is different.”
The court posted the matter for Thursday to enable Sibal complete his arguments.
The court further asked Sibal if it was true that the four videos containing the offensive speeches delivered by Wangchuk were shared with him at the time of arrest. This issue became crucial as additional solicitor general (ASG) KM Nataraj submitted for the Centre that the videos were shown to him before taking him into custody.
The court posted the matter for Thursday to enable Sibal complete his arguments.
