Police have arrested eight members of a gang in connection with the killing on 2 October of a man hacked to death inside a church near Chennai, The Times of India reports.

G. Dhanasekaran, a Pentecostal Christian involved in local politics and who ran a real estate business, was at a service at Devasabha Church on the day he was killed. He stepped outside to receive a phone call and was surrounded by five men who chased him into another church before hacking him to death.

Police said Dhanasekaran, 34, who was also the youth wing secretary for the political party, DMK, was killed because he refused to pay a bribe to a gangster: he’d almost been killed on  a previous occasion.