Zubeen Garg, Assam’s beloved minstrel, met a tragic end in Singapore. What was meant to be a celebratory performance at the Northeast India Festival turned into a mournful requiem. It was heartbreaking and terribly tragic for a star to go into the sea, never to return.
In Assam, where every note Zubeen sang resonated like a heartbeat, his death was mourned like none in memory. For three days, lakhs of people came to offer their last respects. His final journey was literally a sea of humans in mourning. Before they returned to their homes, a tide of speculation rose, with police probes and political currents threatening to overshadow the melody of his legacy.
The state police have approached Zubeen’s demise with a zeal that transforms tragedy into a labyrinth of intrigue. Within days, the Special Investigation Team (SIT), tasked with unravelling the circumstances, invoked various sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), including 103 pertaining to murder, against Zubeen’s manager, Siddharth Sharma, and festival organiser Shyamkanu Mahanta. The accusation? Poisoning, a charge as startling as it is unsubstantiated, given Zubeen’s stature as a figure who navigated Assam’s turbulent cultural and musical waters with ease. Two band members, Shekharjyoti Goswami and Amritprabha Mahanta, were remanded for 14 days, their alleged crime hinging on proximity rather than proof.
The police’s net widened further, ensnaring Zubeen’s cousin, Sandipan Garg, a Deputy Superintendent of Police, who was suspended and arrested on October 7 for attending the Singapore event under what authorities deemed “suspicious circumstances”. His wife’s revelations about his desire to join the trip fuelled the SIT’s scrutiny, alongside financial probes uncovering Rs 1 crore in transactions tied to security arrangements. Now that’s a sum that raises eyebrows in a state where resources are often stretched thin.
The investigation’s scope is as wide as the Brahmaputra. Eleven Non-Resident Indians, loosely linked to the festival, have been summoned for questioning, their connection to Zubeen as tenuous as a distant chord. Members of the SIT are planning to go to Singapore, autopsies have been parsed with meticulous care, and a chargesheet promised within three months, a timeline that suggests depth but risks drowning in its own ambition. The SIT’s efforts, while thorough, teeter on the theatrical, with summonses and seizures that may yet yield more questions than answers.
Beneath this procedural tide lies a political undercurrent, subtle yet undeniable. Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, addressing the state on October 7, cautioned against forces seeking to destabilise Assam, likening their intent to the recent upheaval in Nepal. His words, measured yet pointed, reflect the state’s fragile fault lines: Hindu-Muslim tensions in Darrang, lingering unrest from the CAA-NRC, and the Northeast’s perennial struggle for identity. Zubeen’s death, however, briefly harmonised these divides. For a fleeting moment, Assam found unity in grief.
Politics has sought to orchestrate division before his pyre’s embers cooled. The Bharatiya Janata Party, led by Sarma, frames the probe as a triumph over “conspiracy-mongers”, while the Congress demands a CBI inquiry, questioning the state government’s impartiality. The Assam Jatiya Parishad speaks of “obstructing justice”, and Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee offers condolences laced with calls for central intervention. Zubeen’s memory risks becoming a ballot-box battle as the next year’s Assembly election draws near. There is hardly anyone ready to reconcile to the possibility that it was an accident. If it wasn’t, then who can be hanged and on whom can it be nailed?
In 2020, at the peak of the Covid crisis, Sushant Singh Rajput, or SSR as he is popularly known posthumously, died in an apparent suicide in Mumbai. The death of a young, rising star came as a shock to people already battling an epidemic. The shoddy investigation grew shoddier as days passed. The murky circumstances became murkier, and the dirty politics dirtier.
The BJP was then in the opposition in the state of Maharashtra. Covid had triggered a new genre of YouTube forensics entertainment. The news went wild, discussing the death of a hero who hadn’t left a villain we could hang. So, his girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty became the much-needed vamp, and notable Bollywood characters were dragged into the muck. Central agencies jumped in. To this day, we do not have a conclusive answer to the question the agencies were tasked to address.
Zubeen Garg was not a fan of the BJP, or the Congress, for that matter. He was a free bird who ruffled many feathers and did that quite often. An equal-opportunity offender, he spoke his mind in a tone that had an acquired roughness to it, rough enough to startle hypocrites into submission. The political elite couldn’t express the dislike they harboured, knowing the unwritten rule: you don’t contradict Zubeen Da. He had made it young and never had to fake it. Even after a runaway success like Ya Ali, he left Mumbai, for Zubeen Garg wouldn’t suffer the faux schmoozing of scheming suckers. For him, Assam’s heart remained his home. The wild witch-hunt after his tragic death would not amuse him if he could watch from above. He might have used his favourite “ghenta” here.
The similarities with the SSR case are striking and sobering. Like SSR, Zubeen was a small-town boywhose untimely death in a big city sparked a deluge of doubt. Family members, from Zubeen’s sister to his wife, have called for clarity, echoing SSR’s kin. Social media, particularly X, is abuzz with #JusticeForZubeen, where wild theories take hold without any basis, just as they did with #JusticeForSSR. SSR’s case drowned in drugs and defamation; Zubeen’s swims in poison and politics. The sequence remains familiar: amplify anomalies, detain the peripheral, and let speculation write the script.
Zubeen was more than a singer; he was Assam’s soul. His death, whether accidental or otherwise, feels like a sitar string snapped mid-melody. The police must navigate this investigation with precision, resisting the undertow of political agendas. Summoning NRIs is all well and good, but the focus must remain on facts, not fanfare. Politicians, too, must honour the unity Zubeen inspired, not exploit it for political expediency. The question remains: will truth emerge from this sea of suspicion, or sink beneath its weight?
(Kamlesh Singh, a columnist and satirist, is Tau of the popular Teen Taal podcast)
(Views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author)
