New Delhi: After the Bahujan Samaj Party’s Tamil Nadu president K. Armstrong was killed in Chennai on Friday, local police said they arrested eight people in connection with the incident.
Armstrong was attacked with knives and sickles near his home at around 7 or 7:30 pm on Friday by a group of bike-borne people, media reports said.
According to The Hindu, a senior police officer said Armstrong’s biker assailants were wearing food delivery uniforms.
He was soon rushed to a nearby hospital, where he died.
The Greater Chennai police said early on Saturday that Armstrong was killed due to “personal enmity”, and The News Minute cited police sources as attributing his killing to revenge for the murder of a history-sheeter in Chennai last year.
All eight men who were arrested are reportedly relatives of the history-sheeter, The News Minute‘s report also said.
Soon after his death, Armstrong’s supporters gathered in front of his house and staged a road roko demanding justice, The Hindu reported.
Armstrong had been a councillor in the Greater Chennai Corporation and was made Tamil Nadu president of the Bahujan Samaj Party in 2007, the newspaper also said.
Party president Mayawati said Armstrong’s killing was “extremely sad and worrying”, adding that she planned to travel to Chennai on Sunday to pay her tributes and meet his family.
Chief minister M.K. Stalin said he “ordered the police officers to conduct the case expeditiously and bring the culprits to justice as per the law”.
Opposition parties in the state criticised the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam-led government in the wake of Armstrong’s killing.
“If the state president of a national party is assassinated, what is the point of criticising law and order in the DMK regime?” Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader Edappadi Palaniswami said according to a machine translation of his X post.
He added: “I strongly condemn the DMK chief minister for pushing law and order to such a deplorable state that crimes continue to take place without fear of police, government or law.”
BJP Tamil Nadu president Annamalai said Stalin “should ask himself if he has the moral responsibility to continue” as chief minister “having left the law [and] order of the state in shatters”.
