Relatives of Headmistress Sabera Begum Baby, 50, said some of her colleagues and members of the school's governing body, who had long been 'conspiring to oust her from the school', might have been involved in the brutal killings.

Police guess the murders took place between 1:45 and 2:15am.

Security men of Sheltech Glory Apartment House on Road No. 7 in Baridhara said, to their knowledge, there was no one else except Sabera and her daughter Sharmin Alam Shampa, 25, in their fourth-floor apartment on Thursday night.

Sabera's husband Shamsul Alam Mridha, manager of Abul Khayer Steel Mills, was in Chittagong during the incident.

"We awoke to the cries of the on-duty guard, Johor. He entered our room with blood gushing out of his head," Dhonesh, chauffeur to singer Syed Abdul Hadi, who lives on the third floor of the same building, said. Dhonesh was sleeping with caretaker of the building Faruq and another guard Jahangir in the staff quarters on the ground floor.

"When we asked him how he got hurt, he couldn't say anything except that somebody had attacked him," Dhonesh told The Daily Star.

"While checking on things at the building, Faruq found the front door of madam's apartment open and madam (Sabera) and her daughter lying dead on the floor," Dhonesh added.

The apartment staff later rushed to Syed Abdul Hadi, who immediately informed Gulshan police of the incident. Police recovered the bodies at 5:00am and took them to Dhaka Medical College and Hospital (DMCH) for autopsy.

Morgue sources said Sabera's throat was slit and there were six other stab-wounds in her throat, abdomen and chest. Sharmin received a five-inch-wide and three-inch-deep cut in her throat and two stabs in the left chest.

In primary examinations, no mark of rape was found. But further test would be carried out, the morgue source said.

Doctor Asad Hossain, Sabera's brother, who teaches at the DMC Anatomy Department, received the bodies on completion of autopsies at 3:00pm.

The bodies are kept at ICDDR,B mortuary and will be buried after Sabera's son Shahriar Alam Sunny, who studies MBA in Bangkok, arrives Dhaka today.

Security guard Johor was sleeping close to the inner gate of the building. The killers may have attacked him because he had identified them or tried to stop them from fleeing the scene, said a police officer.

Police found the net of a window in the apartment's kitchen cut open. They recovered a bloodstained six-inch knife and collected finger- and foot-prints from the kitchen floor. A number of footprints were also there all over the apartment and bloodstains on the handle of the front door.

Police also found a folder of documents open in Sabera's bedroom and, suspecting some papers might have been stolen, seized it.

Deputy Commissioner (DC) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (North Zone) Golam Rasul said the killings were pre-planned. "The killers took nothing and displaced nothing. It seems they came solely to kill," he told The Daily Star.

Shamsul Alam filed a murder case last night without naming any one as accused. He, however, suspected that the security guards and their part-time housemaid might be involved in the killings, duty officer at Gulshan Police Station said.

Police endorses the suspicion, saying the staff of the house might have had a hand in the killing. "The killers did not have to break any of the doors or windows to enter the house. It suggests they entered through the main gate without any difficulty and managed to leave the scene safely," said a police officer seeking anonymity.

Gulshan police last night arrested Johor and Jahangir on suspicion and kept at the station.

Sabera's husband Shamsul also suspects that someone acquainted with his wife was involved in the killings. "It's highly improbable that my wife would answer the door for a stranger," he added.

"Why did they kill them? I would have given them all my property for my wife and daughter's lives. Why did they kill such a pious woman [Sabera]?" he bewailed.

Law enforcers also do not brush aside the possibility of the killings being made from an intention to grab the victims' family property.

"I don't have any enemy neither did my daughter. Those who killed them are beasts in the guise of human beings and the country is now filled with such savages," Shamsul lamented with tears rolling down his face.

He was scheduled to fly to Bangkok tomorrow with the victims for Sharmin's treatment. "With whom will I go now, for what?" the traumatised man asked.

The victims' relatives said there seem to be no motive for the murders except for Sabera's enmity with some of her colleagues and members of the school's governing body.

"Some people had forced her to resign from the school in 2001 and she was reinstated after the BNP government came to power," Asad told The Daily Star. She then had filed a case against the people she held responsible for her forced resignation.

Mostafa Kamal, a mathematics teacher at Siddheshwari Girls High School, said, "I've heard some senior teachers have been fighting a legal battle with her for about four years."

DC Golam Rasul said, "We're working to identify the people who had personal animosity towards her."

Sharmin graduated from the North South University and was working in a World Bank project. She was the eldest of one brother and two sisters.