When Chongtham Vikram Singh finally returned home to the northeastern Indian state of Manipur, his old friend Dhiren Sadokpam went to the airport to meet him.
This was not the homecoming he had imagined. Vikram arrived in the cargo bay, inside a steel container.
Three days earlier, the 54-year-old musician was beaten to death outside his home in southeast Delhi.
“No one seemed to have the strength to speak,” Sadokpam told the BBC. “What can I say?”
Vikram spent most of his life traveling with his guitars, taking his music from the small stages of Manipur’s capital, Imphal, to the jazz clubs, classrooms and concert halls of Delhi.
He went downstairs late Sunday after a group of men were shouting and drinking outside his apartment building, according to police and his family. When he objected to the disturbance, the men allegedly attacked him.
His wife Joshna Chongtham said Vikram returned upstairs but was followed and attacked outside the family’s apartment.
A few hours later, after he complained of shortness of breath, his 20-year-old son took him to the hospital. He died there early in the morning.
Seven men and a minor were arrested in connection with his murder. Police say they are investigating the circumstances of the attack.
The death prompted an outpouring of grief and anger and renewed concerns about the discrimination faced by northeast Indians in Delhi, where community members have reported racial slurs, harassment and violence for years.
Police say they have not yet found any evidence of a racial motive. But northeastern groups held protests and demanded an impartial investigation.
The incident also brought attention to Vikram himself, a familiar figure in the Manipur music scene who, over four decades of playing and teaching, had amassed a large circle of students, friends and fans around him.
At a press conference two days after his death, his wife Joshna said: “We do not seek revenge. We are looking for justice. He had a name, a family and a life that mattered.”