5 min readNew DelhiJul 17, 2026 01:01 PM IST With Sonam Wangchuk’s ongoing hunger strike bringing renewed attention to his work, the long-standing debate over whether 3 Idiots was inspired by the engineer-innovator-educator has resurfaced. While Wangchuk has repeatedly distanced himself from the film over the years, Aamir Khan recently clarified that neither he nor the film’s writers even knew about Wangchuk while making the Rajkumar Hirani directorial. The clarification has once again raised an old question: Who actually inspired Rancho? Released in 2009, 3 Idiots was officially adapted from Chetan Bhagat’s novel Five Point Someone. The film itself became the subject of controversy after Bhagat alleged that he wasn’t given due credit for the story. Around the same time, Sonam Wangchuk publicly stated that he had never been consulted by the filmmakers and had not given his consent for any adaptation of his life. He claimed he had even written to the makers after the film’s release but never received a response. Over the years, however, director Rajkumar Hirani and producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra …