Assam Police on Thursday charged Zubeen Garg’s manager, Siddharth Sharma, with murder, culpable homicide not amounting to murder, criminal conspiracy, and causing death by negligence in connection with the death of the singer on September 19, before a music festival in Singapore.
Similar charges were filed against North East India Festival manager Shyamkanu Mahanta.
Sharma and Mahanta were arrested Wednesday; the former from an apartment in Gurugram and the latter at the Delhi airport after his Singapore flight landed.
They were then taken to Guwahati for questioning, news agency PTI said.
This afternoon Munna Gupta, a senior officer from Assam’s Criminal Investigation Department, said interrogation of Sharma and Mahanta began after a local court sent the accused to police custody for 14 days. “The investigation is going on and I cannot share details at this time (but) we have added charges under Section 103 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita…” he said.
Section 103 of the BNS deals with the punishment for murder.
The Assam government had set up a 10-member SIT, led by Special Director-General Gupta, to investigate the singer’s death. The 52-year-old went for a swim in the waters off Singapore.
He was found dead, floating face-down in the water.
Singapore authorities have handed an autopsy report – the results of a second are pending – to the Indian High Commission, and the SIT is now trying to piece together a timeline of Garg’s last 48 hours, an exercise all the more important after pharmaceutical drugs were found in his bag.
The bag was in Sharma’s possession.
The drugs have been sent for analysis.
Meanwhile, Garg’s former bandmate, Sekhar Jyoti Goswami, has also been questioned, as was fellow singer Amritprava Mahanta and his cousin, Sandipan Garg.
Garima Garg, the singer’s wife, told NDTV “the law will take its own course” when informed about Sharma and Mahanta’s arrests. “We have to know what exactly happened. They should be questioned. The investigation is on, and the law will take its own course. And it will proceed that way. We all should cooperate,” she said.
The state government has announced plans to build a second memorial in Jorhat to permanently honour the singer’s contribution to music and cinema.
Mahanta is the younger brother of former DGP Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta, who is presently the Chief Information Commissioner of the Assam State Information Commission.
His older brother is Nani Gopal Mahanta, who was Education Advisor to Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma before he became Vice Chancellor of Gauhati University.