How Ladakh protest leader Sonam Wangchuk went from Indian hero to traitor'

"On the night of August 5, 2019, hundreds of Kashmiris were arrested amid a crackdown by Indian security forces that followed the Indian government's decision to strip the region of its special rights and status as a state. Sonam Wangchuk celebrated, and thanked Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. THANK YOU PRIME MINISTER, he wrote on X, then Twitter, for fulfilling Ladakh's longstanding dream. One of India's best-known innovators and education reformers, Wangchuk was referring to a decades-long demand from many in Ladakh, for the cold desert bordering China to be separated from Jammu and Kashmir, the Indian-administered part of the disputed region that Pakistan also claims."

"Until August 2019, Ladakh was part of Jammu and Kashmir. With the Modi government's move, it had been made a separate administrative entity, a so-called union territory to be governed federally by New Delhi. But while the rest of Jammu and Kashmir also reduced to a union territory from a state was allowed to keep a locally elected legislature, Ladakh was not. That lack of any say over their future would slowly turn the peaceful Ladakh into a tinderbox of political unrest against Modi's government in the subsequent six years. And leading that protest movement is a disillusioned Wangchuk. On September 26, Wangchuk was arrested and transported more than a thousand miles from home to jail in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, charged with anti-national activities, conspiring to overthrow the government, after a breakaway group from his protest engaged in violent clashes with security forces. Indian paramilitary soldiers shot dead four protesters, after they had set the local office of Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party on fire, and authorities accused Wangchuk of instigating the violence."

Sonam Wangchuk publicly supported the August 2019 decision to separate Ladakh from Jammu and Kashmir and thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Ladakh became a federally governed union territory without a local legislature, while the rest of Jammu and Kashmir retained one. The absence of local political control contributed to growing unrest over six years, culminating in a protest movement led by Wangchuk. On September 26, Wangchuk was arrested and moved to Jodhpur, charged with anti-national activities and conspiring to overthrow the government after a breakaway group in his protest clashed violently with security forces, resulting in four protesters being shot dead.

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