North East India Festival (NEIF) chief organiser Shyamkanu Mahanta and his manager Siddhartha Sharma, alleged to be involved in the death of legendary singer Zubin Garg in Singapore, are brought to the CID office inside a police vehicle.
Credit: PTI Photo
Guwahati: The SIT probing into the circumstances leading to Zubeen Garg's death informed a local court that Sekhar Jyoti Goswami, a musician with Zubeen's band and an eyewitness of the incident, claimed during interrogation that the iconic singer was poisoned by his manager Siddharth Sarma and Shyamkanu Mahanta, an Assam-based entrepreneur and organiser of Northeast Festival in Singapore.
Zubeen and some of his band members were in Singapore to perform in the festival but he died on September 19 while swimming in the sea.
Goswami and a female singer of Zubeen's band, Amrit Prabha Mahanta were arrested on Thursday (October 1) following questioning by the SIT. Mahanta and Sarma were also arrested and are in SIT remand.
The SIT said Sekhar claimed that a conspiracy was hatched to portray Zubeen's death as an accident and Siddharth, who stayed with Zubeen in the same hotel in Singapore, displayed suspicious conduct before the incident. Goswami also claimed that they chose a foreign venue to conceal their "conspiracy" and asked him not to share videos of the yacht on which Zubeen, his friends and associates had a party before getting into the water.
Sources within the SIT, however, said both Mahanta and Sarma rejected Goswami's claims during counter interrogation.
Before his arrest, Sekhar had told TV channels that Zubeen's body had turned blue when he was taken out of the water and was provided CPR, an emergency support given to a person experiencing breathing difficulties.
This raised suspicion over the cause of Zubeen's death prompting his fans to demand a second autopsy. The second autopsy was done here at Gauhati Medical College Hospital just before his cremation on September 23.
The reports of the post-mortems conducted in Singapore and in Guwahati were handed over to Zubeen's wife Garima. Zubeen's wife on Saturday told reporters that she did not see the reports and returned it to the police. "I have faith in the police and the court and so I did not want to keep the reports with me."
Reacting to Goswami's claim about poisoning, Garima asked why did he conceal this earlier. "Investigation is going on and so if someone did this to Zubeen, those responsible should be given harshest punishment. Zubeen taught me to trust and love people. And if someone did such a thing to Zubeen, justice must prevail," Garima said, refusing to talk further on the claims.
Meanwhile, a judicial commission headed by Justice Soumitra Saikia, a sitting judge of Gauhati High Court, was constituted to carry out a judicial investigation into the circumstances leading to Zubeen's death. The commission has been given six months time to submit its report.