When Chongtham Vikram Singh finally came home to India’s north-eastern state of Manipur, his old friend Dhiren Sadokpam went to the airport to receive him.
It was not the homecoming he had imagined. Vikram arrived in the cargo hold, inside a steel container.
Three days earlier, the 54-year-old musician had been beaten to death outside his home in south-east Delhi.
“Nobody seemed to have the strength to speak,” Sadokpam told the BBC. “What could be said?”
Vikram had spent much of his life travelling with his guitars, carrying his music from small stages in Manipur’s capital, Imphal, to jazz clubs, classrooms and concert halls in Delhi.
According to police and his family, he had gone downstairs late on Sunday night after a group of men were shouting and drinking outside his apartment building. When he objected to the disturbance, the men allegedly attacked him.
His wife, Joshna Chongtham, said Vikram returned upstairs but was pursued and assaulted outside the family’s apartment.
Hours later, after complaining of breathlessness, he was taken to hospital by his 20-year-old son. He died there early in the morning.
Seven men and a juvenile have been arrested in connection with his killing. Police say they are investigating the circumstances of the attack.
The death has prompted an outpouring of grief and anger, and renewed concerns about the discrimination faced by people from India’s north-east in Delhi, where members of the community have for years reported racial abuse, harassment and violence.
Police say they have so far found no evidence of a racial motive. But north-eastern groups have held protests and demanded an impartial investigation.
The case has also drawn attention to Vikram himself – a familiar figure in Manipur’s music scene who, over four decades of playing and teaching, gathered around him a large circle of students, friends and admirers.
At a press conference two days after his death, his wife Joshna said: “We are not seeking revenge. We are seeking justice. He had a name, a family and a life that mattered.”
