He claimed that Wangchuk’s removal from the protest site was an ‘arrest’ and that the police had acted without any explanation or written order. Notably, Wangchuk was removed from the protest site by the Delhi Police and admitted to Safdarjung Hospital due to his deteriorating health condition.
Sonam Wangchuk has been illegally arrested. Without any reason, without any explanation, without any written order. In the national capital. On the eve of the Monsoon Session. Will the temple of democracy remain silent?#FreeSonamWangchuk
— Anish Gawande (@anishgawande) July 18, 2026
Gawande later claimed that the police action did not arise from the government’s concern about Wangchuk’s health, but rather it was aimed at disrupting the ongoing protests.
Sonam Wangchuk has been picked up from Jantar Mantar and forcefully taken to a hospital.
— Anish Gawande (@anishgawande) July 18, 2026
This is not out of a concern for Sonam Wangchuk's health. This is to shut down a democratic protest.
If this government cared about protesters, they would not have let GD Agarwal die. If… pic.twitter.com/nRw1LcHDme
Gawande is popular for being the first openly gay person to be appointed as the spokesperson of a political party. He has openly supported and been associated with the CJP protest. Notably, CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke was at Gawande’s house to change clothes when the police briefly detained him as Wangchuk was being removed from the protest site.
Gawande alleged that police personnel detained and beat Dipke while he was on the staircase of his house. He further alleged that Dipke was screaming as the cops thrashed him.
Who is Anish Gawande
According to information available about him, Gawande is the grandson of freedom fighter, lawyer and prominent educationist T K Tope. He was raised in Mumbai and received his education at Greenlawns School, Worli, and Cathedral and John Connon School, Fort. He went to Columbia University to study Comparative Literature, and later pursued postgraduate studies in intellectual history and public policy at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.
Before joining politics, Anish Gawande was an LGBTQ+ rights activist and a writer. He is also the founder of the Pink List India, a database of politicians supportive of LGBTQ+ rights.
After declaring his gay identity, Gawande studied Francophone West Africa and Senegalese linguistic politics and planned to join academia as a professor. However, in 2018, he is said to have had an opportunity to run an election campaign in India, which changed his course. In August 2024, Gawande was appointed as the national spokesperson of NCP (SP).
Gawande is a supporter of horizontal reservation and wants it to be extended to categories that exist alongside caste, for example, sports quotas or reservations for women and people with disabilities. He also feels that a comprehensive anti-discrimination law would entirely solve the problem of discrimination in the country.
Recently, expressed support for the Khalistani propaganda movie, Satluj, which was taken down immediately after release on the Zee5 OTT platform.
“Forty-eight hours. That’s how long Satluj, the film in which Diljit Dosanjh plays the human-rights investigator Jaswant Singh Khalsa, lasted on an Indian screen before it was quietly pulled “until further notice.” A film about people made to disappear, made to disappear. My column this week is about that vanishing: about Khalra, who counted Punjab’s unnamed dead and was himself never found; about Gulzar’s Maachis, which once trusted us to look our own cruelties in the eye; and about the oldest, most unfashionable kind of patriotism, the kind brave enough to remember,” Gawande wrote in support of the movie in an Instagram post.
