Zubeen Garg death case: Singer’s manager Siddhartha Sharma, Singapore fest organiser Shyamkanu Mahanta arrested
Zubeen Garg death probe: More than 10 days after Assam singer Zubeen Garg died in Singapore, the Assam Police arrested North East India Festival organiser Shyamkanu Mahanta and Garg’s manager Siddhartha Sharma and brought them to Guwahati on Wednesday morning, a senior police official confirmed.
The Assam CID had issued summons to both Mahanta and Sharma, the prime accused in the case registered in connection with Garg’s death, to appear before it on October 6. Neither had returned to Assam since the incident. While Mahanta was reportedly arrested at Delhi airport after he landed there from Singapore, Sharma was arrested in Gurgaon.
Garg, 52, had died on September 19 when he was in Singapore for the North East India Festival there. He had lost consciousness while swimming during a yacht outing and was declared dead after he was taken to Singapore General Hospital. The death certificates issued by Singapore authorities state that the cause of death was “drowning”.
Following a slew of complaints filed across the state against Mahanta and Sharma–who was present during the yacht outing–for causing death by negligence and mismanagement, the Assam CID registered a consolidated case on this matter against Mahanta, Sharma and others under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to criminal conspiracy, culpable homicide not amounting to murder and causing death by negligence.
Both Sharma and Mahanta had issued statements saying that they were avoiding returning to Assam as they feared threats to their safety in the face of massive public outrage against them.
On Tuesday, the Ministry of Home Affairs wrote to the Singapore government seeking assistance in the probe from authorities there based on a Mutual Legal Assistance agreement between the governments of India and Singapore.
