Sonia Doohan arrested for sloganeering against Sandeep Singh at R-Day event

New Delhi: Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Sonia Doohan was on Thursday arrested by the Haryana police after she protested against minister Sandeep Singh, who is facing sexual harassment charges by a woman coach, at a Republic Day function in his assembly constituency Pehowa in Kurukshetra.

As Singh got up to hoist the tricolour, Doohan, who heads the NCP’s students’ wing, started shouting slogans against Singh. As she asked Singh not to touch the flag, the Haryana police dragged her out of the venue and took her into custody.

The police action against Doohan prompted strong reactions from the Kisan mahapanchayat which condemned the alleged mishandling of the young NCP leader.

Doohan has emerged as the face of the agitation against Singh and the BJP government in Haryana. On January 8, she held a mahapanchayat of Khap leaders in Narnaund and banned the minister’s entry into the area. Doohan has threatened to escalate the protests against the ruling BJP across the state if Singh was not arrested immediately.

While Singh was stripped of his sports portfolio, he continues to be a minister in the Manohar Lal Khattar government.

The Chandigarh police had booked Singh after the woman coach accused him of sexual harassment, besides various other offences punishable under Indian Penal Code.

Who is Sonia Doohan?

In 2019, Sonia Doohan shot into the limelight when she successfully rescued four rebel Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) legislators - Daulat Daroda, Narhari Zirwal, Nitin Pawar and Anil Patil – from a Gurugram resort on the outskirts of Delhi.  

The four legislators were missing since Ajit Pawar’s midnight swearing-in as Maharashtra’s deputy chief minister along with Bharatiya Janata Party’s Devendra Fadnavis as the chief minister on November 23, 2019.

NCP chief Sharad Pawar had tasked Doohan to bring back the dissident legislators who were allegedly held up in the resort by the BJP. Her move helped in bringing together three parties -- Shiv Sena, NCP and the Congress -- that eventually resulted in the formation of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government in Maharashtra. Shiv Sena supremo Uddhav Thackeray headed the government.

The 30-year-old young NCP leader, who comes from a farming family in Narnaund in Haryana’s Hisar district, once again tried to step in and save the MVA government when rebel Shiv Sena legislators shifted to Guwahati in July last year.

Doohan tried to persuade the rebel Shiv Sena legislators who had revolted against Thackeray. Doohan first went to Guwahati and then tried to reach out to the rebels in Goa where she was arrested for allegedly using fake IDs to book a room in the same hotel where these Shiv Sena legislators were lodged.