Zubeen’s death: Festival organiser will be barred from events in Assam, Himanta says

Mahanta is the Chief Functionary of Trend MMS Private Limited, which organises exhibitions and cultural festivals such as the North East India Festival Singapore and similar ones in Thailand, Vietnam and New Delhi. He is also listed as the Director of several other companies.

The Singapore festival had been organised under the banner of the Ministry of External Affairs and the High Commission of India in Singapore. Garg was there as a “cultural ambassador” and to perform at the festival.

His death triggered mass mourning in Assam as well as anger directed towards Mahanta and Garg’s manager, Siddhartha Sharma, with fans raising allegations of negligence and mismanagement and highlighting the fact that Garg had health issues.

He reportedly experienced breathing troubles while swimming during an outing on a yacht while in Singapore, and the certificate of death issued by Singapore authorities recorded the condition leading to death as “drowning”. As a result of multiple complaints filed in police stations across the state on this, the Assam police had on September 20 stated that a case has been registered at the CID police station against Mahanta, Sharma and others under sections of the BNS pertaining to criminal conspiracy, culpable homicide not amounting to murder and causing death by negligence.

In a statement following Garg’s death, the organising team of the festival had distanced itself from the incident. “Our entire team was engaged in a business meeting with senior Singaporean industrialists and policymakers to facilitate investments in Northeast India. During the meeting, we received a call from Zubeen’s manager informing us that he had met with an accident and had been rushed to Singapore General Hospital. We later learned that a few members of the local Assamese community had taken him on a yacht visit, of which we had no prior knowledge,” the organisers had said.

The festival, which was supposed to take place from September 19 to 21, was cancelled after Garg’s death.