Assamese music icon Zubeen Garg passed away on September 19, 2025 in Singapore after drowning during a swim while on a yacht. He was in Singapore as a cultural ambassador for the North East India Festival. He joined a yacht outing reportedly organised by members of the Assam Association Singapore. During the outing, he lost consciousness while swimming and was later pronounced dead at Singapore General Hospital. Singapore authorities subsequently issued a death certificate stating drowning as the cause of death.Now fresh details about the circumstances surrounding his death emerged during a coroner’s inquiry in Singapore this week.
At a court hearing on Wednesday, Singapore police stated that Garg was “severely intoxicated” at the time of the incident and had refused to wear a life vest before entering the water. The testimony was given by Assistant Superintendent of Police David Lim from the Police Coast Guard, according to a report by The Straits Times. Lim was the first among 35 witnesses scheduled to appear before the coroner’s court examining Garg’s death.The findings presented in Singapore stand in sharp contrast to a chargesheet filed earlier by Assam police. As first reported by The Indian Express, the Assam police charged four individuals with murder, alleging that Garg had been made to consume alcohol and was encouraged to swim.Zubeen Garg’s uncle, Manoj Borthakur, who attended Wednesday’s hearing in Singapore, acknowledged the differing versions and attributed them to the nature of the two investigations, saying they were “being conducted in different situations.” He added that only four witnesses testified on Wednesday and that the inquiry will resume next month.Explaining the divergence, Borthakur said, “In Singapore, there is a coroner’s case which doesn’t look at a criminal angle; it only takes into account the cause of death. It confines itself to that. There is a feeling of difference between what has been presented by the Singapore police and the Assam police. Both cases have been looked into with different perspectives and conducted in different situations. Assam police is looking into the background of the incident, Singapore police is looking specifically into what happened on that particular day.”The coroner’s inquiry in Singapore is a fact-finding exercise led by a judicial officer to determine the cause and circumstances of a death, without assessing criminal liability.
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