Armstrong case: Madras High Court orders retired govt. doctor to be included in team conducting autopsy on Nagendran’s body

The Madras High Court on Friday, October 10, 2025, rejected the plea filed by N. Visalakshi, widow of P. Nagendran, the prime accused in the murder of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leader K. Armstrong, to include a doctor of her choice in a team to be formed to conduct an autopsy on her husband’s body.

However, Justice N. Sathish Kumar ordered that the retired Dean of Kilpauk Medical College Hospital be included in the team of government forensic experts to be constituted to conduct post-mortem on the body of the accused, who died at the Government Stanley Hospital in Chennai on Thursday, October 9.

The judge also ordered that the entire procedure be videotaped and the internal organs preserved for analysis by the forensic department. The orders were issued on an urgent petition filed by the deceased’s wife accusing the police of not admitting her sick husband to a private hospital.

Additional Public Prosecutor (APP) KMD Muhilan told the court that the accused was involved in many criminal cases and was serving life sentence in Puzhal Central Jail in another murder case when he was formally arrested in connection with the Armstrong murder case.

As he was suffering from multiple health complications, the convict received inpatient treatment at the Christian Medical College Hospital, Vellore, between January 30, 2025 and April 22, 2025, and later started receiving regular medical care as an outpatient at the same hospital.

A bench of Justices MS Ramesh and V. Lakshminarayanan on August 13, 2025, directed the jail authorities to shift the convict to a private hospital at Chromepet in Chennai on the request of his wife as medical records revealed that he required a live transplant from a living donor.

Although prison officials applied to a private hospital to admit the convict, hospital officials stated that they had difficulty in admitting him because the doctors who had previously treated him were no longer affiliated with the hospital. That’s why he was treated at Stanley Hospital, APP said.