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Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma dropped a bombshell earlier this week when he said that singer Zubeen Garg's death in Singapore was not accidental, but a case of "plain and simple" murder.
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00:00plain and simple murder with that single declaration the narrative of a tragic
00:21drowning was wiped away replaced by the chilling certainty that someone had
00:26wanted Zubin Garg debt. Assam chief minister Hemant Biswasarma has publicly stated in the state
00:44assembly that Zubin Daa's death was a plain and simple murder not an accident or even
00:51culpable homicide. I'm Anjali Istval and today on post-mortem we uncover every single layer of the
00:59investigation of the death of Assam's cultural icon. First let's travel back in time to the day
01:06the nation heard the tragic news. We bring to you some tragic breaking news that's just coming in.
01:15Legendary Assamese singer Zubin Garg has passed away after an accident in Singapore. What begins
01:22as a leisurely outing in Singapore's southern waters a yacht trip to the turquoise edges of Lazarus
01:30Island quickly becomes the most devastating day in modern Assamese cultural memory. On board that
01:37yacht is a familiar entourage. Zubin Garg, his manager, personal security officers, bandmates, more
01:46than a dozen people who have traveled with him, loved with him, worked beside him. In fact they are his
01:52most trusted brothers in arm. But it is some of these trusted men that today stand accused of his murder.
02:01Two days earlier on September 17th Zubin Garg had landed in Singapore to headline the fourth North East
02:13India festival set to begin the next day. Everything about the trip had been routine but routine has a
02:25way of collapsing without warning. As the yacht drops anchor near Lazarus Island, Zubin steps forward towards
02:33the water. Early clips circulating online show him wearing a life jacket, a picture of casual caution.
02:40But later accounts insist he either removed it or jumped in without one. Moments after entering the sea,
02:48something goes wrong. Witnesses describe a medical crisis, a seizure or a sudden failure to breathe. Panic
03:01spreads across the yacht. People dive in, arms reach for him. When they finally haul him back onto the deck,
03:09Zubin is unconscious and even worse, unresponsive. CPR begins immediately. The race to save his life has
03:18already begun. He is rushed to Singapore General Hospital where the doctors pronounce him dead at 2.30
03:25PM India Standard Time. A drowning, they say. A tragic accident. At least that's how the story begins.
03:37To understand the shock that followed, you have to understand who Zubin Garg was. Not just as a musician,
03:44but as a symbol. Born in 1972, Zubin carved a path that almost defied categorization. A multilingual
03:53singer-composer who recorded tens of thousands of songs across Assamese, Hindi, Bengali, Nepali, and more.
04:00A crossover figure who stepped from Assamese stage to Bollywood studio, leaving hits behind in both worlds.
04:08More than a performer, he was uniquely a cultural bridge. To the young, he was the soundtrack of
04:15festivals, protests, heartbreaks. To older generations, he was the ambassador of an Assamese identity that felt
04:23both modern and rooted. To communities divided by ethnicity or politics, he was the rare artist
04:31that everyone claimed as their own.
04:48Zubin wasn't just popular, he was personal. And so, when news broke of his death in Singapore,
04:55it wasn't merely the loss of a singer. It was the loss of a constant. So, who would want to murder
05:02a man loved by millions? According to the Assam chief minister, one man murdered him and the rest
05:12helped. His statement has shifted the investigation from tragedy to conspiracy. Standing before the
05:19assembly, the chief minister dropped a revelation that stunned even seasoned observers. According to him,
05:26the story behind Zubin Garg's death didn't begin in Singapore and not even in 2025. It began years earlier.
05:35He claimed a big story had been unfolding around the cultural icon since before the COVID-19 pandemic.
05:43A story tied not to the music, not to travel, but to money. Financial entanglements, deals gone wrong.
05:52Threads that he suggested led directly to Zubin's final hours. And then he made his boldest assertion yet.
06:02SIT will submit, search it on time. Already they have made substantial progress. And as I told you,
06:13that Assam police will unearth a larger picture. And whatever brief I have got so far, the SIT is
06:24absolutely confident. And they said that they will be able to give total justice to Zubin Garg.
06:34Seven people were arrested in connection with Zubin Da's death. They are North East India Festival
06:40organizer Shyamganu Mahanta, Garg's manager Siddharth Sharma, DSP cousin Sandeepan Garg,
06:47personal security officers Nandeshwar Bora and Pravin Baishya, bandmate Shekhar Jyoti Goswami,
06:54and singer Amrit Prabha Mahanta. The question everyone will be asking is,
07:00who out of them is the murderer, if it is a murder? Assam was gripped with grief and rumors.
07:07It was ready to erupt and boil over. The anger eventually led to a second autopsy.
07:13What all happened? Here's the story.
07:26What followed Zubin Garg's death was unlike anything Assam had witnessed in a generation.
07:32A wave of grief, massive, unprompted and deeply personal. It swept across the state and then
07:40across India. The Assam government declared three days of state mourning, later extended.
07:53Our whole state came to a grinding halt, overcome by grief. Leaders at the highest levels,
07:59Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chief Minister Hemanta Viswasarma issued tributes acknowledging not just an
08:06artist but a cultural force. And then came the honours. Zubin was cremated with full state rights.
08:13A 21-gun salute echoing over Kamar Kuchi. Assam police carrying his coffin in a gesture rarely reserved
08:22for civilians. But the real tribute came from the people. Lacks of mourners poured into Guwahati. The stadium
08:29stayed open throughout the night as fans, young, old, entire families, filed past his body in silence,
08:37in song and in tears.
08:48Some held the Gamusas inked with his lyrics. Others lit lamps or whispered prayers. Many sang
08:55Mayabini until their voices cracked. Across Assam, shops shut on their own. Food delivery apps paused
09:02their services. The state seemed to stop breathing for a moment. When Zubin Daa's coffin made its final
09:0925-kilometer journey from the airport, tens of thousands lined the road, showering petals as it
09:16passed. It was more than moaning. It was a people losing their voice and trying together to sing him home.
09:25What hurt the people even more was that from the very beginning, the story of Zubin Garg's death split
09:41into two versions. Two truths that refuse to overlap. And the gaps between them are where the mystery lies.
09:48First mystery, the cause of death. Singapore's police force was clear from day one.
09:54No foul play suspected. A drowning supported by their initial autopsy. But thousands of kilometers
10:01away, Assam refused to accept it. And now the SIT investigation has reached a very different conclusion.
10:07The SIT is preparing to file charge sheet with murder charges. Not even culpable homicide.
10:18Two governments, two investigations, two causes of death.
10:25While all this was being debated, Zubin Daa's bandmate,
10:28Shekhar Jyoti Goswami shocked everyone with a new twist. He claimed Zubin had been poisoned by his
10:37own manager and an event organizer. The allegation ignited public suspicion and was powerful enough to
10:45spread on its own. But science told a different story. Both autopsies, Singapore and Guwahati,
10:52found no toxins, no poison, nothing for him. The drowning was real. So if this was murder,
11:00it wasn't through poison. It had to be something else.
11:07Early footage shows Zubin in a life jacket. Careful, relaxed. Reports claimed he later removed it.
11:14Was it a simple swim gone wrong? Or as later floated as a theory, possibly a cardiac episode? Or a seizure?
11:23But the Assam SIT painted a darker picture. They suggested Zubin may have been incapacitated,
11:29possibly after being given alcohol. And eyewitnesses accounts claimed something even more troubling.
11:37That his manager, standing just a few feet away, blocked attempts to save him
11:43when he began to struggle. This raised eyebrows. People asked, was this negligence or intent?
11:52Now here's the revelation that turned a mystery into a possible crime. In the weeks after the incident,
11:59investigators uncovered over 1.1 crore in suspicious transfers flowing into the accounts of Zubin
12:07DA's personal security officers or PSOs, funds tied to the very people organizing the event. Financial dealings,
12:16hidden payments, a motive that never appeared in the early reports, but now sits at the center of the case.
12:26While the investigations continued, what began as a tidal wave of grief,
12:31more than a million people flooding the streets for Zubin Garth's final journey, did not stay grieved for
12:37long. It hardened. It sharpened. It turned into anger. Because while the world moaned, the first official
12:45word from Singapore was just one line. Death by drowning. And for many, that explanation was simply
12:53impossible to accept. Online suspicion spread faster than facts. The hashtag justice for Zubin Garth exploded.
13:02Millions of posts demanding answers, demanding accountability.
13:13Rumors took on a life of their own. Alleged poisoning, leaked alleged post-mortem reports,
13:19conspiracy threads shared thousands of times. Most of it unverified, sometimes entirely fake. All of it
13:28feeding the same belief that the truth was being withheld. Fans pointed to the simplest question.
13:34How does an experienced swimmer drown while everyone else on the yacht walks away unharmed?
13:44Under relentless pressure, the Assam government was pushed into extraordinary action.
13:49A second autopsy was ordered by the Chief Minister, conducted only hours before the cremation.
13:55A special investigation team, or the SIT, was formed under the CID, responding to the flood of
14:02FIRs that were filed by ordinary citizens. A judicial commission, led by a sitting High Court judge,
14:08was tasked with probing every detail of Zubin's final hours. These weren't routine steps. They were
14:16emergency measures, meant to calm a state that refused to be calmed. And then came the breaking point.
14:23When five accused were being transferred to a jail in Baksa district, mobs erupted. Pelting stones,
14:30torching police vehicles, turning raw grief into violent upheaval. What had begun as moaning was now a full-blown
14:39political crisis. Zubin Garg's death didn't just shake Assam's cultural soul. It fractured its calm.
14:47By late September 2025, the investigation into Zubin Garg's death took a sharp and shocking turn.
14:55Assam Police's Special Investigation Team, or the SIT, didn't just question people. They raided them.
15:03And what they found changed everything. Coordinated teams swept across Guwahati. Homes, offices, even hotel,
15:15linked to the men who had been closest to Zubin during his final days. The event organizer, the manager,
15:22and a bandmate who was on the yacht in Singapore. The searches weren't routine. They were deep,
15:29methodical, and led by officers who already suspected the truth was buried under paperwork and hard drives.
15:40At the residence of Shamkanu Mahanta, the chief event organizer, the operation stretched into a second
15:46day. And the hall was staggering. Seven hard disks, two laptops, a computer CPU, multiple pen drives,
15:55stacks of incriminating files, and most unsettling. Nearly 30 official stamp seals tied to companies and
16:03government offices. Investigators also uncovered multiple pancards for his company, each with
16:12different numbers. A red flag for financial fraud. A siren for money laundering. The findings were so
16:20serious, the SIT immediately pulled in the Enforcement Directorate or the ED and the Income Tax Department.
16:29This was no longer only a homicide investigation. It had become a financial crime case with national
16:36agencies diving deep into it. Next, the SIT arrived at the locked apartment of Siddharth Sharma,
16:43Zubin's manager. No one answered. No one had been seen there since the singer's death. In the presence of a
16:51magistrate, officers broke the lock. Inside, they recovered more documents, a laptop, and much, much more questions.
17:02Parallel raid hit Jalukwadi, the home of Shekhar Jyoti Goswami, the sound recordist on the Singapore
17:10trip. Again, a haul of pen drives, hard disks, a CPU and documents. Digital footprints that might reveal
17:18what really happened at sea and what was planned on land. News of the raids ignited the public. Crowds
17:28gathered outside Sharma's residence, demanding arrests. Tensions escalated. Police and protesters clashed in the
17:36streets. And behind the scenes, investigators sifted through mountains of evidence. Data that would
17:44soon form the backbone of what the Chief Minister promised would be a watertight chart sheet in December.
17:54Those September raids did more than uncover documents. They rewrote the investigation,
18:00transforming a supposed accident into a complex, charged case of fraud, betrayal and murder.
18:08As the wheel of investigation churned, two arrests made the people of Assam pause with shock. Zubin
18:15Daa's personal security officers, or PSOs, they were part of his security detail provided by the
18:22government since 2013 and were present on the yacht in Singapore when he drowned. Two men who were
18:30supposed to protect Zubin Garg have just become prime suspects. And the trail that leads to them is made
18:38of money. More than a crore rupees quietly moving through their bank accounts. When the Special Investigation
18:45Team or the SIT in Assam began following the financial loose ends in this case, they did not start with
18:52killers in the shadow. They started with the people who walked beside Zubin Garg every day. His personal
18:59security officers, Nandeshwar Bora and Parej Bahsha.
19:06Both men were not private bouncers. They were Assam police personnel. Officially assigned to Zubin Garg,
19:13for years after he received threats from the banned militant group, ULFA. They were part of his daily
19:21life, on stage wings, at airports, on the road and crucially around him in the tense weeks leading up to
19:29his final trip to Singapore. The break comes in early October. The SIT announces that two of Zubin's
19:38long-time PSOs, Nandeshwar Bora and Paresh Bahsha have been taken into custody in connection with his
19:46death. Their suspension from duty quickly follows, with senior CID officers publicly confirming that
19:54financial irregularities in their bank accounts triggered this dramatic turn.
19:59This is the moment the story shifts. The case is no longer only about organizers, managers or distant
20:09NRIs. It has reached the inner security ring. The men paid by the state to shield Zubin from danger.
20:19So what did investigators actually find? Bank analysis over the previous four to five years reveals that the
20:28combined value of transactions linked to accounts controlled by Bora and Bareshha crosses the one
20:35crore mark, far beyond what either man could reasonably show as income from an officer's salary.
20:42Inside interrogation rooms, both PSOs reportedly struggle to provide a satisfactory explanation
20:49for these figures. They claim that large chunks of the money relate to funds Zubin kept with them
20:55for his social work. Money he intended to distribute to the poor and needy, especially during and after
21:02the pandemic. His wife Garima supports part of that picture, saying he often used different people's
21:09accounts to channel donations and that the officers even maintained diaries and bank statements of those
21:16transactions. But to the SIT, that still leaves a crucial question open. Where does philanthropy end and where might a covert
21:26payment for something darker begin? This is where the financial story collides with the murder hypothesis.
21:33By the time the PSOs are arrested, the SIT has already detained event organizer Shamkanu Mahanta,
21:43manager Siddharth Sharma, bandmate Shekhar Jyoti Goswami, coast singer Amrit Prava Mahanta and Subin's cousin,
21:52suspended APS officer Sandeepan Garg. Allegations of poisoning are in the air. Shekhar Jyoti has publicly
22:01claimed that the manager and the organizer conspired to poison Zubin and specifically chose a foreign
22:08venue like Singapore to get away with it. Picture the logic investigators are working with. If there
22:16was a plan to kill a star as protected and surrounded as Zubin, it could not happen without help from those
22:24who control his movement and his environment. Bodyguards decide who gets close. They know his
22:32roots, his habits, when he is most vulnerable, when he is in the water or on a boat or alone in a hotel room.
22:41If someone needed assurance that a risky plan would go smoothly, that there would be no last minute change
22:49of venue, no extra people present or no unexpected security intervention. Who better to pay than the
22:58men managing his physical safety?
23:04For the public, the arrests of Bora and Baesha are shocking. They pushed the total number of people
23:09arrested in the case to seven, transforming what once looked like a freak accident in Singapore into a
23:17suspected multi-layered conspiracy, stretching from festival organizers and managers to musicians,
23:24relatives in uniform and now bodyguards. What happened to Zubin Garg? The investigations will
23:30probably uncover one day, but what will remain unhealed are the wounds of Assam and its people,
23:37the broken trust, the belief that those who are closest to you will forever watch your back and
23:43protect you. That's all we have for you in this episode of Postmortem, where we put the spotlight
23:49on the crimes that shock yet make us want to know more and more. Goodbye, but do keep watching India Today.
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