(EXCLUSIVE) Sunidhi Chauhan: I wasn’t attacked with bottle, fans were having fun

A video from Sunidhi Chauhan’s show at Shri Guru Ram Rai University’s annual fest Zenith 2024 in Dehradun, where a bottle was hurled towards the stage, has gone viral. While reports suggest that the incident left the singer shocked and upset, Chauhan tells us, “I had no idea that the video has gone viral. It’s the first time something like this has happened with me and I don’t think it was done intentionally. I was performing my second last song and the crowd was having a blast. They were hurling bottles in the air and one fell on the stage as it had water in it. When I said, ‘Yeh kya ho raha hai? Show ruk jayega,’ so they responded sweetly, ‘No, please don’t’. The kids were just having fun.”
Chauhan adds that she’s glad she wasn’t hurt. “It hit my microphone with a lot of force. Of course, if the mic was closer to my mouth, I could have got hurt and would have perhaps responded differently. But aisa kuch hua nahin. Having said that, I am aware of some instances from the past, when people deliberately misbehaved with the performers and threw things at them, aur woh galat hai. I strictly condemn that.”
While the singer says it wasn’t intentional, some instances in the past have been quite harsh when it comes to the way musicians were treated during stage shows. Padma Shri Kailash Kher was attacked during a concert in Karnataka last year, when a bottle was thrown at the singer. Padma Shri Sonu Nigam, too, was manhandled at a concert in Mumbai last year, when a man, identified as Swapnil Prakash Phaterpekar, attacked him and his team over a selfie. Post the incident, Sonu addressed the incident when he spoke to the reporters outside and said, “I fell on the steps after I was pushed. Rabbani came to save me and was pushed from behind. He could have died. I filed a complaint because people must ponder over it when they force someone for a selfie.”