When Golam Mostafa, 35, lay dead, his killers hung him with a rope to make his death appear a case of suicide.

Police arrested three neighbours Zahirul Islam, Mojibur Rahman and his wife Farzana for the murder.

The victim's brother, Monir Hossain, told The Daily Star that Rashed, a youth living next door, called Mostafa from his house at East Nandipara at 1:00am yesterday and took him to one Mojibur's house nearby. Mostafa's seven-year-old son Russell followed his father to what was to become his untimely death.

When he arrived to the house, assailants accosted Mostafa and bound with ropes, then started beating him with sticks. As Russell watched in horror, the assailants ordered him to call his mother.

The attacks only intensified when Mostafa's wife, Nazma Begum, arrived. As her husband lay bleeding, they demanded she return to them the Tk 3,000 that Mostafa took for buying and setting an electric meter at Mojibur's house.

Nazma complied, but the beatings continued again when she left to retrieve the money, so brutally in fact that Mostafa finally died at approximately 5:00am.

When they realised he was dead, the attackers hung Mostafa from the grill of the balcony and told Nazma, who returned in the morning, that he had committed suicide.

Khilgaon police arrested Zahir, Mojibur and Farzana after Nazma filed a case against them and additional two to three unknown assailants.