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The world is facing alarming challenges of environmental pollution due to uncontrolled water contamination and multiple drug resistance of pathogens. However, these challenges can be addressed by using novel nanocomposites materials such as, SnO 2 /graphene nanopaletelets (GNPs) nanocomposites remarkably. In this work, we have prepared SnO 2 nanorods and SnO 2 /GNPs nanocomposites (GS-I and GS-II) with size of 25 ± 6 nm in length and 4 ± 2 nm in diameter. The optical bandgap energies change from 3.14 eV to 2.80 eV in SnO 2 and SnO 2 /GNPs nanocomposite. We found that SnO 2 /GNPs nanocomposite (GS-II) completely removes (99.11%) malachite green in 12 min, under UV light exposure, while under same conditions, SnO 2 nanorods removes only 37% dye. Moreover, visible light exposure resulted in 99.01% removal of malachite green in 15 min by GSII as compared to 24.7% removal by SnO 2 . In addition, GS-II nanocomposite inhibits 79.57% and 78.51% growth of P. aeruginosa and S. aureus respectively. A synchronized contribution of SnO 2 and GNPs makes SnO 2 /GNPs nanocomposites (GS-II) an innovative multifunctional material for simultaneous fast and complete removal of malachite green and inhibition of drug resistant pathogens., (© 2021 IOP Publishing Ltd.)