On Thursday, 8th August, Sembium Police arrested N Aswathaman, a Tamil Nadu Congress party office-bearer, for his involvement in the murder of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leader K Armstrong. On July 5th, a gang murdered the BSP leader outside his house in Perambur using sharp weapons.
According to the reports, Aswathaman, the state’s general secretary of the Tamil Nadu Youth Congress, is the son of north Chennai don Nagendran, who is imprisoned in Puzhal. Aswathaman was previously arrested for threatening a businessman in Ennore. According to reports, he believed Armstrong was the reason for his imprisonment and had grown hatred towards him.
The hatred was so intense that Aswathaman also suspected Armstrong had conspired against him in the lawyers’ association elections. Aswathaman, an advocate by profession had also threatened Armstrong with a gun a few months ago over a multi-crore land dispute in Morai, near Sholavaram on Chennai’s outskirts.
The probe is eventually expected to lead to Nagendran. Nagendran had been released on parole a few weeks before Armstrong’s murder. He attempted to meet with Armstrong to reach an agreement with Aswathaman on the property dispute. But Armstrong avoided meeting him, the police stated.
On 5th July, K Armstrong, the Tamil Nadu chief of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), was hacked to death by six bike-borne attackers near his house in Chennai. Some of the attackers were reportedly dressed as delivery agents and used sharp weapons during the attack. They attacked Armstrong when he was holding discussions with his party functionaries near his house in the city’s Sembium area. Following the attack, they fled the crime scene. Responding to the gruesome killing, BSP Supremo Mayawati demanded “punishment for the guilty”.
Armstrong’s family immediately rushed to the spot where he was lying in a pool of blood with severe injuries to his head and neck. He was taken to a hospital where he was declared dead.
K Armstrong was a lawyer by profession. In 2006, he served as a corporation councilor and later became the state president of the BSP the next year. He contested from the Kolathur constituency in the 2011 Tamil Nadu assembly elections but lost. Two years ago, he came to the limelight, when he organized a mega rally in Chennai and invited BSP chief Mayawati.
A total of 22 persons have been arrested by the police in this case. Notably, after the arrest, Aswathaman was expelled from the primary membership of the Tamil Nadu Youth Congress with immediate effect. “The Tamil Nadu Youth Congress is committed to maintaining the highest standards of integrity and discipline within its ranks,” the official statement by Congress read.
Tamil Nadu Youth Congress president M. Lenin Prasath condemned Aswathaman’s involvement and said that the decision of his expulsion was taken after his actions were ‘deemed inconsistent with values and principles of our party.’
