Chandigarh: Fugitive Honeypreet Insan, a close aide of jailed Dera Sacha Sauda sect chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, was arrested on Tuesday and will be produced in a trial court of Haryana’s Panchkula on Wednesday, police said.

She was detained by the Punjab Police from the Zirkapur-Patiala highway and later handed over to the Haryana Police, a senior police official told IANS. The police had been on her trail for nearly a month and raids were conducted in Nepal, Rajasthan, Bihar and Haryana.

Confirming her arrest, Panchkula Police Commissioner A.S. Chawla told reporters that Honeypreet would be produced in a court on Wednesday.

A court in Panchkula, adjoining Chandigarh, on September 25 issued arrest warrants against top Dera functionaries — Honeypreet, Aditya Insan and Pawan Insan.

All three were booked by the Haryana Police on charges of sedition, inciting violence and being involved in a conspiracy to help the Dera chief escape after his conviction by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court on August 25 on two counts of rape of female disciples in 1999.

The Haryana Police had sounded an international alert against all three.

Honeypreet, in her mid-30s, has been the closest aide of Ram Rahim since 2009.

Honeypreet, who has been claiming to be Ram Rahim’s “adopted daughter”, starred as the main heroine in five films he directed, produced and acted in over a period of three years.

Ram Rahim has been sentenced to 20 years of rigorous imprisonment and a fine of over Rs3 million (Dh168,191).

His rape conviction led to violence in Panchkula and Sirsa in Haryana, leaving 38 people dead and 264 injured. Isolated incidents of violence were also reported from Delhi and several other places in Punjab.

Earlier, Honeypreet Insan, who has been on the run for over a month, said she was “devastated” by allegations that she incited the Panchkula violence.

She told a TV news channel that her “Papa” was innocent and that his conviction on August 25 in two rape cases had left her “depressed”.

Honeypreet, 36, against whom a lookout notice and later an arrest warrant was issued by the Haryana Police, told AajTak that allegations levelled against her are not true.

“Was I present with the arsonists [during the mayhem in Panchkula on August 25], how are they levelling such allegations,” she said while sitting inside a car at an undisclosed location.

On being asked about her image being portrayed as a “villain”, a “conspirator”, Honeypreet replied, “How are they making me an accused. I was there with my Papa [Ram Rahim] and discharging my duty as a daughter [on August 25].”

“Every daughter remains with her father, I went with him. Have you heard me saying a word where I instigate people. I had gone there [to CBI court in Panchkula] with a hope that my father will return by evening, but when he was held guilty, I went into depression, how could I think about anything else, I was totally devastated,” she said.

Honeypreet had accompanied Ram Rahim from sect headquarters at Sirsa to a special CBI court in Panchkula on August 25.

After Dera chief’s conviction on that day, she also accompanied him in a chopper when he was flown to Rohtak to be lodged in a jail.

There has been no trace of Honeypreet after the evening of August 25. However, she said she was not running away from law and was still trying to come to terms that Ram Rahim had been sentenced. She also said she was “devastated” when she was made an accused in incidents of violence.

“Try to understand what my condition was. The woman who used to make patriotic films with his father [Ram Rahim], the woman in whom her father had infused spirit of patriotism over the years, he goes behind bars, which was unthinkable for me. And for that very woman to hear that sedition charges have been slapped, I was devastated. I was completely shaken to hear such serious charges when in my life I have not even killed an ant,” she said.