During Armstrong’s funeral a fortnight earlier, both Thirumavalavan and Ranjith were seen giving each other moral support as they struggled to hold back tears. But by July 20, equations had completely changed. Commenting on the memorial event organised by Ranjith, Thirumavalavan said, “Some political ignoramus on the payroll of some forces opposed to the VCK are exploiting Armstrong’s murder and trying to denigrate VCK more than the DMK.”
As these political battles raged, the investigation into the was witnessing dramatic twists. A group of men surrendered within hours of the murder and one of the key suspects was by the police. The investigators claimed that Armstrong mixed up with the underworld and was murdered because of a gang war. The slain leader’s supporters alleged that the police were destroying evidence by staging extra judicial killings.
Although they fell out politically, both Thirumavalavan and Ranjith have consistently stuck to the stand that Armstrong’s murder is part of a larger political conspiracy and not the job of some gangsters.
Armstrong was the leader of one of the smallest parties in Tamil Nadu and the Buddhist movement he led is still fledgling. Whom did his existence threaten so much that he had to be taken out of the way?
Armstrong was powerful in a way that wasn’t immediately apparent. He rubbed shoulders with the most powerful people in Tamil Nadu and his influence far exceeded his immediate social context. In the rough neighbourhoods of north Chennai where deprivation spawns violent desperados, Armstrong was able to match-up to men who had bigger organisations and powerful caste cartels backing them.
While claims of his involvement with the mafia have never been proved, Armstrong had a reputation as a strongman who was often approached by people for out-of-court mediation of disputes. People close to him say that he was one of the most powerful lawyers in the Madras Bar Association, for whose elections he could sway the votes of nearly a thousand lawyers cutting across communities.
Although nobody seemed to have a fully coherent theory, the overall sense we got from people close to Armstrong was that he had enemies across the spectrum. Their theories matched a key aspect of the investigations so far — the list of suspects detained by the police include functionaries of all major parties in Tamil Nadu, including the ruling DMK, the principal opposition party AIADMK, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the Tamil Manila Congress (TMC).
