Sonam Wangchuk has used hunger strikes since 2023 to press demands for Ladakh. His seventh — begun in solidarity with students over the NEET leak — ended the way three of his previous ones have: not by his own choice.

The claim

Reports and viral posts said police 'forcibly hospitalised' Wangchuk, 59, on 18 July 2026, sparking anger that a peaceful hunger strike was ended by force rather than negotiation.

What we found

The core facts are confirmed by multiple outlets. Wangchuk was removed from Jantar Mantar on Saturday, 18 July 2026 — 20 days into his fast — and taken to Safdarjung Hospital. Al Jazeera reported that police encountered resistance from demonstrators during the removal, and that a New Delhi police deputy commissioner said the action followed a **Delhi High Court order** for 'essential medical care' based on expert medical advice — this was not a unilateral police decision but a court-directed one. Hospital officials said Wangchuk was 'stable but refusing treatment,' and his wife, Gitanjali Angmo, said he was 'alert and very strong' but 'definitely weak and losing muscle mass,' and that she was not informed before he was moved.

This is context, not contradiction: a court ordering medical intervention on humanitarian grounds is a materially different act from a police crackdown to silence a protest, even though it ends the protester's chosen course of action either way. Both things can be true — the state intervened to prevent a possible death, and it did so without the family's prior knowledge, over the strikers' own stated wishes ('six weeks or death').

Wangchuk's dual demands — Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan's resignation over the NEET leak, and Ladakh's long-pending statehood and Sixth Schedule status — remain unresolved. His removal, far from ending the movement, is what swelled the following Monday's march on Parliament to over 10,000 people.

Verdict

**True.** Wangchuk was physically removed from his protest site and hospitalized under a court order, not by his own choice — the core viral claim holds, with the added, fair context that the court cited his medical welfare as the basis for the order.