Pickets ransacked eight shops at Station Road at about 9:00am. Transports were the roads and factories remained closed.

Meantime, Shukur Gazi, a member of the outlawed Purba Banglar Communist Party (Janajuddha) and an accused in Awami League (AL) leader Monzurul Imam murder case, gave a confessional statement yesterday before Metropolitan Magistrate Atiqul Huq.

Police Commissioner Bazlur Rahman told The Daily Star that he was expecting a quick breakthrough in the case. He said the killers belonging to the PBCP-J were hired hitmen.

Shukur in his statement gave a detailed account of how and where the plan of the murder was finalised.

Officer-in-Charge (OC) of Khulna Sadar Police Station Shibli Noman talking to pressmen claimed that Shukur, also the prime accused in the triple murder case of Rampal upazila in Bagerhat district, said two influential leaders of the Awami League arranged the money for the execution.

He said the planning was done at a house in Rampal upazila. "We were six in number and the mission was to kill Monzurul Imam. We acted as hired killers on payment," the police official quoted Shukur to have said.

Shukur is claimed to have said six members of the PBCP-J were assigned to kill the AL leader and six others were stationed at four points within 500 yards of the place of occurrence to help the killers escape unobstructed. Shukur said three powerful handbombs were exploded followed by several rounds of fire from sawn-off.303 rifles.

The killers made good their escape on foot in two groups along the Mirzapur Road and Baitypara, Shukur said.

"Five others of the squad left the city soon after the murder and I took shelter in a house at Mahirkhal of Tootpara," the OC quoted Shukur as saying.

Police said Shukur is a professional killer of the outlawed PBCP-J. He was involved in the murders of Rampal BNP leader Aslam and two others in June last year.

Rajib Sarder, Shirin Sultana and Shukur Gazi, three of the seven arrested in connection with the killing, were placed on a three-day remand for questioning (with effect from Tuesday). A special group of intelligence officers are quizzing Shukur to know the names of the men behind the killing.

Meanwhile, the two sons of Imam, Rumi and Jami, yesterday refused once again to implicate the BNP-Jamaat alliance in the killing without specific evidence.

They said they demand arrest of the killers and the plotters and their exemplary punishment.

Speaking a crowded press conference, Rumi and Jami reiterated their appeal not to make the murder of their father a political issue and requested people not to indulge in vandalism in the name of protest.

Former state minister Talukdar Abdul Khaleque MP, former whip Mostafa Rashidi Shuja, former MP Mannujan Sufian and president of the district AL Sheikh Harun-ur-Rashid attended the press conference.