Zubeen death case: Promise made to people fulfilled with filing of chargesheet: Himanta

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Friday asserted that the promise made to the people of the State in connection with singer Zubeen Garg’s death has been fulfilled with the filing of the chargesheet by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) within the stipulated time frame.

“We had taken the responsibility of ensuring justice to Zubeen Garg and we fulfilled this with the SIT submitting the charge sheet within a record time in the court today,” Sarma said on the sidelines of a programme in Kokrajhar. Some of the accused have been charged with murder, and “now I am sure that the court will conduct the trial and give necessary punishment to the accused,” he said. The SIT on Friday charged four of the seven accused with murder in its charge sheet filed in a Guwahati court.

The murder accused are the chief organiser of the North East India Festival, Shyamkanu Mahanta, Garg’s secretary Siddhartha Sharma, and band members Shekhar Jyoti Goswami and Amritprava Mahanta. Garg’s cousin and suspended Assam Police officer Sandipan Garg has been charged with culpable homicide not amounting to murder, while two of the singer’s personal security officers (PSOs) — Nandeswar Bora and Paresh Baishya —have been charged with criminal breach of trust.

Barring the two PSOs, the five accused had accompanied Garg to Singapore, where he died under mysterious circumstances while swimming in the sea on September 19. “We all know that the court is impartial. Now, the entire responsibility lies with the court of law. We must all respect the process of the law,” Sarma said.

On the issue of hearing the case in a fast-track court, the CM said the Government will have to talk with the Chief Justice in this matter. “There is a procedure to be followed. The case will go from the CJM’s court to that of the sessions judge, and only after that, the issue of fast-track court and special prosecutor will come up,” he said.

Sarma had said earlier that the state government will request the Gauhati High Court to set up a fast-track court for hearing Garg’s death case. The Assam cabinet had also decided to appoint a special public prosecutor on the recommendation of the advocate general, who will be engaged exclusively for the hearing of the case from the filing of the charge sheet to the delivery of justice.

He further said that now that the SIT had already submitted the charge sheet on the case related to Garg, “we will now move on to the case of Gaurav Gogoi.” The Assam Government had constituted an SIT to probe into the alleged Pakistani links of state Congress president Gaurav Gogoi and his British wife, Elizabeth Colburn.

The SIT had submitted the report on September 10 to the Chief Minister, who claimed that the investigating agency had “unearthed startling facts which point towards a larger conspiracy aimed at undermining the sovereignty of our nation.” Sarma has been attacking Gogoi and his wife over the last few months, alleging that they have a connection with the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI.