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A day after late singer Zubeen Garg’s manager Siddhartha Sharma and North East India Festival organizer Shyamkanu Mahanta were arrested and brought to Guwahati, the Assam Police Thursday added the murder charge to the CID case in connection with the probe into Garg’s death, a senior police officer said.
Mahanta and Sharma were arrested from the Delhi airport and Gurgaon, respectively, by the Assam Police. They had been sent to 14-day police custody. The Special Investigation Team (SIT), which was formed to investigate Garg’s death, is interrogating the accused.
On Thursday, CID Special DGP M P Gupta, who is heading the SIT, said that Section 103 of the BNS, which pertains to murder, has been added to the case. “Both are being interrogated since Wednesday. Section 103 has been added to this case but at this moment, I cannot say more in this matter,” said Gupta.
In the meantime, authorities in Singapore have handed over the postmortem report to the High Commission of India. Gupta said it would be handed over to Garg’s family after they return to Guwahati from Jorhat, where they had gone to perform the singer’s shraddha rituals. According to the Singapore-based The Strait Times, the Singapore Police Force had in a statement “ruled out foul play”.
Garg, 52, died on September 19 when he was in Singapore for the North East India Festival. While swimming during a yacht outing he lost consciousness and was declared dead after he was taken to the Singapore General Hospital. The death certificates issued by Singapore authorities attributed the cause of death to “drowning”.
A slew of complaints were filed across the state against Mahanta and Sharma — who was present during the yacht outing — for allegedly causing death by negligence and mismanagement. The Assam CID registered a consolidated case in the matter against Mahanta, Sharma and others under relevant sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to criminal conspiracy, culpable homicide not amounting to murder and causing death by negligence.
