Eight people were arrested in India on Saturday for the murder of a politician who championed the rights of lower-caste Indians, police said.

K. Armstrong, the state boss of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), was hacked to death with machetes and sickles near his home in the southern city of Chennai on Friday night.

Six men travelling on motorbikes attacked Armstrong while he was “chatting with friends and supporters” near his home in the Tamil Nadu state capital, the Indian Express newspaper reported.

The men reportedly escaped before anyone could intervene.

Several of Armstrong’s supporters took to the streets later in the evening to protest his assassination and demand justice.

Senior Chennai police officer Asra Garg said eight suspects were being interrogated after a “preliminary investigation”.

Mayawati, the national head of Armstrong’s BSP, who uses one name, said the attack was “highly deplorable and condemnable”.

“The state government must punish the guilty,” she said in a post on social media platform X.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin also urged police to speedily conclude the investigation.

“Armstrong’s assassination is shocking and deeply saddening,” he said.

The main accused in the deadly stampede at a religious congregation in Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras that killed 121 people was arrested from Delhi’s Najafgarh locality by a Special Operations Group of the state police, a senior police official said today.

Devprakash Madhukar, the main accused in the July 2 incident, was arrested late on Friday night, Hathras Superintendent of Police Nipun Agarwal said.

He said Madhukar was picked up by a Special Operations Group (SOG) team of Hathras police, reports our New Delhi correspondent.

Agarwal said Madhukar worked as a fundraiser for events of self-styled godman former policeman Surajpal alias Narayan Sakar Hari alias Bhole Baba, and collected donations. The UP police will apply for remand of Madhukar, he said.

The SP said Madhukar's financial transactions and money trails are being looked into and his phone call detail records are also being checked.

However, on Friday night, Madhukar’s lawyer A P Singh had claimed he had surrendered to the police in Delhi where he had come for medical treatment.

Madhukar, the ‘mukhya sevadar’ (chief volunteer) of the congregation where the stampede occurred. He is the only accused named in the FIR lodged at Sikandra Rao police station in Hathras in connection with the incident.

Uttar Pradesh Police had announced a reward of Rs 1 lakh for information leading to Madhukar’s arrest.

Till Thursday, six people, including two women volunteers, who were members of the organizing committee of Bhole Baba’s congregation, have been arrested in the case.

An FIR was lodged in the matter on July 2 under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) sections 105 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), 110 (attempt to commit culpable homicide), 126 (2) (wrongful restraint), 223 (disobedience to order duly promulgated by the public servant) and 238 (causing disappearance of evidence).

On July 3, the Uttar Pradesh government had formed a three-member judicial commission headed by a retired high court judge to probe the Hathras tragedy and to look into the possibility of a conspiracy behind the stampede. (AFP)

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