On the day of the gruesome murder, Tamil Nadu BSP chief K Armstrong had visited his under-construction house in a narrow lane at Perambur in north Chennai. Known as Venugopalsamy Koil Street, the narrow lane is a densely populated residential area that the slain leader visited regularly. This is just a few hundred meters away from the Perambur police station and the Perambur barracks, the two main landmarks in the area.
The CCTV images show a few men alighting from a motorbike with machetes and sickles. The footage also shows a man arriving with a bag and a machete and fleeing from the spot. Sources say that Armstrong was murdered in retaliation for the murder of a high profile history sheeter Arcot Suresh who was killed in August 2023.
According to highly placed sources, the police are also investigating the sources linked to the political heavyweights involved in the Aarudhra gold scam. While Arcot Suresh supported the Aarudhra gold trading company, Armstrong was fighting for the depositors who lost money in the scam. The Aarudhra gold scam case has been under investigation for the past few years. The trading company had allegedly defrauded more than a lakh depositors to the tune of Rs.2438 crores. Armstrong had fought for the depositors who lost money and had promised to retrieve their money. “Jayapaul and Armstrong supported the depositors who lost money,” a senior police officer told The Week.
During a meeting at Arakkonam, a year before, Arcot Suresh allegedly made gestures to eliminate Armstrong for acting against his interests in the gold scam case. Suresh’s team believed that Jayapaul killed him on instructions from Armstrong. Interestingly, one of the suspects who surrendered to the police after Armstrong’s murder, Ponnai V Balu is the brother of Suresh. Balu had vowed to eliminate Armstrong either on July 5, the birthday of Suresh, or before August 18, his first death anniversary.
Balu, who is facing three criminal cases, allegedly led the gang that killed Armstrong. Suresh was known to be a gang leader and he was named in the murder of Thennarasu, the brother of rowdy Bomb Saravanan, in 2015.
While the police sources confirm that gang rivalry was the reason behind Armstrong’s murder, it is yet to be revealed if he was behind Arcot Suresh’s murder. Arcot Suresh was killed in August 2023. But the police investigation is yet to reveal the intention for his killing and also if Armstrong had a hand in it.
“They are trying to close it as gang rivalry. But there is a larger conspiracy behind Armstrong’s killing. Saying that the police did not have information or did not know that there were conspiracies to kill him is not acceptable,” says R Kumar, a BSP worker, who participated in the protest rally demanding a detailed probe in Armstrong’s killing.
The DMK government in Tamil Nadu, a day after the killing of Armstrong made high-profile transfers in the police department. Chennai City Commissioner Sandeep Rai Rathore has been replaced by A Arun, IPS, who was the Additional Director General of Police (ADGP) Law and Order. “We are seriously looking into the issue. We will tell them (rowdies) in their language to leave criminal activities.”
