By 6.30 in the evening on Tuesday, April 14, crowds had already begun forming near the Dr Ambedkar Kalyana Mandapam in Thiru Vi Ka Nagar, a reserved constituency in north Chennai. The public meeting for Porkodi was scheduled to start only at 8pm. But people – many of them women, carrying placards bearing her slain husband K Armstrong's face – had come early, and they had come in numbers.
The posters that greeted them carried portraits of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) stalwarts MG Ramachandran, J Jayalalithaa and Edappadi K Palaniswami, Dravidian ideologues CN Annadurai and Periyar EV Ramaswamy — and, conspicuously, Narendra Modi and the BJP insignia, a reminder of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) alliance under which Porkodi Armstrong is contesting. And at the side: Porkodi herself, and star campaigner Kovai Sathyan, the actor-turned-political voice whose speech that evening would reach back two thousand years for a metaphor.
Porkodi told The News Minute in an interview during the campaign, that her fight is for a single reason: “justice.” Her campaign is built around that single word but the politics of the alliance that brought her to the hustings is one Armstrong was opposed to and therein lies the contradiction.
When Sathyan took the stage, he invoked Kannagi—the protagonist of the Tamil epic Silappathikaram, composed by poet Ilango Adigal around the 5th century CE. Kannagi's husband Kovalan is wrongly executed by the Pandya king's order. She walks into the royal court, holds up her husband's anklet as evidence of the injustice, denounces the king and calls him to account. The king dies of shame, and Kannagi, in her grief and fury, tears off her own breast and hurls it at the city of Madurai, burning it to the ground. She has become, in Tamil literary and political imagination, the supreme symbol of a wronged woman demanding justice by any means necessary.
Sathyan drew the parallel directly: "The modern Kannagi, sister Porkodi Armstrong, will enter the Assembly and ask the fallen ignorant king MK Stalin — where is my justice? And when she asks, that fallen king will no longer be in the Assembly."
The case with no closure
Armstrong was hacked to death on July 5, 2024, near his under-construction house on Venugopal Swamy Kovil Street in Perambur, a street he had walked daily for months while supervising the work. He was chatting with friends when four men, disguised as food delivery agents, attacked him with machetes. He was pronounced dead at Apollo Hospital.
Twenty-seven people were arrested and remanded in the case, including Nagendran, a notorious gangster, and his son Ashwathaman, a Congress functionary. Investigations revealed that while one gang carried out the attack, it was financed and masterminded by Nagendran, who allegedly held a grudge against Armstrong over threats to his son's political career. A 7,000-plus-page chargesheet was filed, attributing the murder to gang rivalry linked to the 2023 killing of gangster Arcot Suresh. Armstrong's family rejected this framing and demanded a CBI probe.
In September 2024, the Madras High Court quashed the chargesheet and transferred the probe to the CBI. The Supreme Court, in November 2025, stayed that transfer, keeping the investigation back under Tamil Nadu police for the time being. In February 2026, the Madras High Court revoked bail for 12 accused, which too was stayed by the Supreme Court. Nagendran, the alleged mastermind, died in prison in October 2025. Key suspect 'Sambo' Senthil remains at large despite an Interpol lookout notice and a multi-state manhunt. The trial has not meaningfully advanced. Nearly two years on, the motive remains officially unsettled.
It is in this context that Porkodi Armstrong is asking voters in Thiru Vi Ka Nagar to send her to the Assembly.
Politics after loss
Porkodi Armstrong is soft-spoken, visibly hesitant in front of cameras, and for much of the time since her husband's death, was away from the public eye. After briefly serving as BSP's Tamil Nadu coordinator, she was removed from the party – expelled, by her account – following differences with state president P Anand. More than 500 BSP workers rallied in her support, questioning the central leadership's decisions. On July 5, 2025, the first anniversary of Armstrong's murder, she launched the Tamil Maanila Bahujan Samaj Katchi. By March 2026, flanked by AIADMK former minister D Jayakumar, she filed nomination papers on the two-leaves symbol from the Thiru Vi Ka Nagar constituency.
When we spoke to her in the middle of the campaign — she hesitated before each answer, choosing her words carefully, taking a moment before responding. Her answers were short, deliberate, and consistent in their focus.
Why did she decide to enter politics? "Samathuva Thalaivar entered politics for the welfare of people. I've entered politics to continue his work," she said. Armstrong was often called Samathuva Thalaivar or the Leader of Equality.
Why did she choose AIADMK?
"Justice," she said. "I came here for justice."
Porkodi said she faced some issues while campaigning. “When we were campaigning and gaining good support from voters, the minister of this constituency created some problems. He used rowdies to trouble us. The day before yesterday, there was also a distribution of money. There is a threat to the lives of both me and my daughter," she said.
Porkodi said she was not deterred. "If I had fear, I wouldn't be standing in this election. I will face everything with courage."
The alliance nobody expected and the debate it opened
The contradiction at the heart of Porkodi's candidacy is impossible to ignore. Armstrong spent his entire political life rejecting the Dravidian parties, both the DMK and the AIADMK, as structurally incapable of delivering justice to Dalits. He contested the 2011 Assembly election from Kolathur against MK Stalin not to win, but to register dissent. As journalist Jeyarani, who knew him well, told TNM earlier, he saw the Dravidian parties as entities that used Dalits as vote bank fodder while denying them any real share of power. And through his BSP organising, Armstrong worked to build an independent Bahujan politics precisely because he believed neither Dravidian formation would deliver.
Now, his widow is contesting on the AIADMK's two-leaves symbol, in an alliance that includes the BJP, a party whose ideological project Armstrong's Ambedkarite-Buddhist politics was fundamentally opposed to. Director Pa Ranjith said Porkodi Armstrong’s candidature was a continuation of Armstrong’s political mission to help oppressed communities gain power and appealed to voters to support Porkodi.
The backlash against his endorsement of Porkodi was swift. Critics pointed to the conflict of interest in a filmmaker known for Dalit resistance lending his name to a candidate running within a BJP-led coalition. Ranjith said his statements had been misunderstood and that he would clarify later.
For many in Ambedkarite circles, the question is not personal — they understand why a grieving widow who has been expelled from her husband's party might reach for any political vehicle available.
A person who was close in Armstrong’s circle but did not want to mention his name said that contesting under the AIADMK-BJP coalition means lending legitimacy to forces associated with Hindu nationalism, forces that Armstrong's entire cultural project – his Buddhist vihar, his conversion ceremonies, his neo-Buddhist publishing – was built to counter.
Porkodi's own answer, when pushed on this, circles back to a single word: justice. She has said publicly that EPS consistently raised her husband's case in the Assembly, and that when the DMK government, which controls the police investigating the murder, was overseeing the probe, the family felt the case was being mishandled.
The meeting itself captured the full complexity of that moment. Nila Dhamma, the Buddhist collective that Armstrong helped nurture in Perambur and that remains central to his neo-Buddhist cultural legacy, was present in the audience. So were BJP and AIADMK workers. Pa Ranjith's Neelam Cultural Centre performed songs — one describing how Armstrong was a people's leader and how he was killed, how Porkodi is seeking justice for that and wants to stand with people.
Thiru Vi Ka Nagar has been a DMK stronghold in recent years, with the party fielding its own candidate. The AIADMK-BJP alliance, under whose symbol Porkodi is contesting, is attempting to convert sympathy and anger over Armstrong’s killing into electoral momentum. Smaller parties and independents are also in the fray.
The north Chennai constituency is known for working-class settlements and a significant Dalit population. It is a space where Dravidian parties have traditionally dominated, but where Ambedkarite assertion and grassroots organising – of the kind Armstrong was associated with – have had a visible cultural and political presence.
In the 2021 election, P Sivakumar of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam defeated PL Kalyani of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam by a margin of over 55,000 votes, with Sivakumar polling more than 61% of the vote share.
Criticism of both the DMK and AIADMK in north Chennai constituencies, including Thiru Vi Ka Nagar has centred on allegations of uneven development, gaps in basic civic infrastructure, and anti-incumbency against sitting MLAs, even as the party highlights welfare delivery and urban projects.
Tamil Nadu assembly elections are scheduled for April 23, 2026. Votes will be counted on May 4.
Also Read: Put to the sword: The life and politics of north Chennai's Buddhist strongman