NCP members Shrey Kotial & Sonia Doohan arrested in Goa for impersonation & cheating

|HT|

Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) members Shrey Kotial and Sonia Doohan were ostensibly in Goa for a holiday when they checked into the Taj Convention Centre Hotel last week. Hours later, they were arrested for impersonation and cheating after it was found Doohan checked in under the name of Kotial’s wife, Shruti Narang. NCP leader Dheeraj Sharma insisted Narang was booked for a stay at the hotel before she fell ill and was unable to travel. He claimed Doohan instead checked in.

But there is more to it than meets the eye. The two checked in at the hotel a day before rebel Shiv Sena lawmakers arrived there en route to Mumbai ahead of a trust vote Maharashtra’s Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government faced because of their rebellion.

Doohan was earlier credited for playing a key role in getting back four NCP lawmakers when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) briefly formed the government in Maharashtra in 2019 with their help. Doohan, who heads NCP’s students’ wing, similarly checked into a Gurgaon hotel, where the four NCP lawmakers were staying three years earlier. She whisked them away from a back door and drove them to NCP chief Sharad Pawar’s residence in New Delhi. Devendra Fadnavis, who was sworn in as the chief minister as the BJP hoped more NCP lawmakers will back them, fell as Doohan brought the four back. The Shiv Sena-led MVA government was later formed in 2019 with NCP and Congress’s backing. It fell in the face of a trust vote and paved the way for rebel Shiv Sena leader Eknath Shinde’s swearing-in as the chief minister with BJP’s support. Sharma maintained Doohan, who is from Haryana, did not check into the Goa hotel to get the Shiv Sena lawmakers around to end their rebellion. “If the Shiv Sena rebels can tour the entire country...from Mumbai to Surat, then to Guwahati and Goa on the state’s expenses, then why cannot members of a political party also go for a holiday?” Sharma asked.

He added police arrived at the Goa hotel at 5:30am and questioned the NCP leaders about the purpose of their visit. “[They were] later asked to visit the police station for questioning. They were questioned the whole day...because they could not find anything against them as there was nothing wrong, they booked Sonia for impersonation,” Sharma said. He called it nothing but an attempt to hound the two because they belong to NCP. “This was nothing but a BJP ploy to keep Sonia out of Maharashtra knowing of her past success. Even today she is being questioned, but they [police] cannot find anything against them. They got bail after a 10-minute hearing,” Sharma said. Kotial and Doohan were granted bail as magistrate Sahir S Issani noted impersonation is a bailable offence while there was no concrete ground to justify the cheating charge.

People aware of the matter said Shiv Sena lawmakers reported Doohan’s presence at the hotel and alleged attempts were being made to reach out to them with offers. The Goa Police told Issani a list of Sena lawmakers was found in her possession and that she had “some mala fide intention of harming them” at NCP’s behest. The magistrate rejected objections to their bail plea citing vague grounds. Doohan was asked to report to the police station for four days and not to leave Goa without the investigating officer’s permission.

(Except for the headline and the pictorial description, this story has not been edited by THE DEN staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)