CHENNAI: A 45-year-old Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) functionary was chased and hacked to death by a motorcycle-borne gang at Vannandurai in Besant Nagar on Saturday night.
Police arrested five men, all aged around 20, on Sunday in connection with the killing that they suspect was in retaliation to a 2009 murder. While visuals of the brutal attack went viral, Adyar deputy commissioner AC Karthikeyan and Shastri Nagar inspector (L&O) Rohini were transferred to vacancy reserve on Sunday evening.
The deceased, S Kannan of Shastri Nagar, was a B-category history-sheeter with at least three criminal cases against him. He had served as AIADMK Ward 174 (South) secretary before quitting the party and joining the TVK following the Assembly election. He also ran a travel business which also supplied cabs to IT companies, police said.
2009 murder likely to be motive: Police
According to Shastri Nagar police, the arrested men have been identified as Bharani, Rakesh, Naresh, Manikandan and Hariharan, all natives of Chennai. Preliminary investigation suggests that the 2009 murder of Siva alias Sivakumar in Adyar, a case in which Kannan was an accused, may have been the motive for Saturday’s attack. Police said Bharani, who was arrested on Sunday, is Siva’s nephew. Police had attributed the 2009 killing to a personal dispute involving a woman.
On Saturday, Kannan was chatting with his friends at Vannandurai around 9.30 pm, when the gang arrived on three motorcycles carrying sickles and knives. Noticing them, Kannan tried to flee, but the assailants chased and hacked him, killing him on the spot, police said.
Though his friends attempted to intervene, the gang allegedly threatened them with knives and fled the scene. Upon receiving information of the attack, police sent Kannan’s body to Government Royapettah Hospital for postmortem examination. CCTV footage from the locality, which captured parts of the attack, was examined as part of the investigation.
Following the murder, Kannan’s relatives staged a protest demanding action against those responsible. They dispersed after senior police officers assured them that the assailants would be apprehended. While the revenge angle remains the primary line of investigation, police said other possible motives are also being examined.
Meanwhile, Leader of Opposition Udhayanidhi Stalin condemned the killing and targeted the TVK government over the state of law and order. Referring to Kannan’s criminal background and political affiliation, he questioned the government’s claims of improved policing and urged it to focus on public safety rather than blaming the DMK.
Taking to X, BJP state president Nainar Nagenthran condemned the murder and said the killing showed that even ruling party workers were unsafe, raising concerns over the law-and-order situation across the state. He said if such a crime could happen in the capital city, the situation in interior villages could only be more alarming, and urged the CM to take concrete steps to improve law and order.
The arrests come a day before Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay’s scheduled response to the debate on the demands for grants for the police department in the Assembly.
