Zubeen death: SIT chargesheets seven, murder charges pressed against four

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had earlier called the death of the singer a “murder”. “It was a murder case from the very first day. The accused Shyamkanu Mahanta, Siddharth Sharma, Amritprava Mahanta, and Shekhar Jyoti Goswami are locked up in a murder case,” Sarma had said last month.

Who have been arrested in the Zubeen Garg death case?

Seven people have since been arrested in connection with this case, the first of which were the festival organiser Shyamkanu Mahanta and Garg’s manager Siddhartha Sharma.

Three people who had accompanied him to Singapore — his cousin and Assam Police Service officer Sandipan Garg, and his bandmates Shekhar Jyoti Goswami and Amritprava Mahanta — have also been arrested, along with his two Personal Security Officers (PSOs) Paresh Baishya and Nandeswar Bora.

The issue of Zubeen’s death and the investigation into it has been raised both during the ongoing Lok Sabha session and the recently concluded winter session of the Assam Legislative Assembly.

In the Assembly, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma — who has made several public statements calling Zubeen’s death a murder — declared that “one (of the arrested) has killed him and the others assisted”.

In the meantime, the police in Singapore, which is where the death had occurred, is carrying on its own investigation. It had stated that its preliminary investigation did not suggest “foul play”.