Armstrong murder: Notorious gangster serving life sentence emerges as key suspect, arrested

CHENNAI: The city police on Friday arrested P Nagendran, a life convict in the murder of an AIADMK MLA, in connection with the murder of BSP State unit president K Armstrong.

A couple of days ago, his son Aswathaman, a Youth Congress functionary and an advocate, was arrested in connection with the murder.

Sources said Nagendran refused to sign the warrant, after which it was pasted outside his prison cell. Nagendran is a life convict in the murder of former AIADMK MLA Stanley Shanmugam, who was hacked to death outside his house in Vyasarpadi on November 8, 1997. Nagendran and his associate "Mint" Ramesh were initially sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment by a trial court, which was enhanced to life imprisonment by the Madras High Court.

After coming out of prison, Ramesh joined the BJP and started indulging in kangaroo courts and extortion, and was arrested by the Avadi city police in May last year.

Police sources said Nagendran and Aswathaman had previous enmity with Armstrong over a multi-crore land deal near Sholavaram and also over scrap business in Tiruvallur. While out on parole a few months ago, Nagendran had attempted to hold peace talks with Armstrong, but it did not materialise.

Meanwhile, BJP leader and advocate, Paul Kanagaraj, was summoned and interviewed by the police on Friday as he had represented some of the suspects in the case.

Meanwhile, a special team from city police on Friday arrested the correspondent of a private school in Chidambaram for allegedly sending a threat letter to Armstrong's house in the name of a van driver to settle scores.

Police had initially secured the van driver from Padur near Kelambakkam, as the letter was sent in his name. However, further investigations revealed the role of Arunraj, who had enmity with a district education officer who was serving in Cuddalore after she refused to give accreditation for his school. Since then, Arunraj has been troubling the official and those associated to her like the driver.

So far, functionaries from DMK, BJP, AIADMK, and TMC (M) have been arrested in connection with Armstrong's murder. Last week, the police arrested five people, including T Pradeep (29), a former Home Guard volunteer with the city police, and advocate B Siva (35) of Mathur, who is said to be a close associate of a notorious history-sheeter, who is under the police scanner.

Eight persons, including slain history-sheeter Arcot V Suresh’s brother were arrested within three hours of the murder on July 5. In an early morning "encounter" on July 14 near Madhavaram, city police shot dead K Thiruvengadam (33), one of the suspects, when he allegedly opened fire at the police team which rounded him up.