He is believed to have been killed by the gang inside a running auto-rickshaw.

Police said Sheikh Atiar Rahman, 55, deputy assistant director of NSI, was posted in Kushtia. He fell victim to the gang that police suspect to be the members of "Aggyan Party" who make their victims unconscious by drugging them or "Malam party" that puts pungent ointment into the eyes of the targets and then makes off with belongings.

Police however could not say how Atiar was killed.

Family members said they talked to Atiar over cellphone soon after he got down from a Hanif Paribhahan bus at Kalyanpur from Kushtia at 7:45pm. He told them that he was about to board a CNG-autorickshaw and would reach his house at Ahmedbagh in Basabo under Sabujbagh Police Station in half an hour.

Hailed from Barani village in Tungipara upazila of Gopalganj district, Atiar was supposed to go on LPR in January next.

Meanwhile, receiving a phone call from an anonymous caller that a man was lying unconscious near the Nam flat in Mirpur-13, Sub-Inspector Motiur Rahman of Kafrul Police Station rushed to the spot at around 10:00pm and took the man to National Heart Foundation in Mirpur where the doctors declared him dead.

Atiar's brother-in-law Golam Mostafa said as Atiar was not returning home, they tried to contact him through cellphone, but could not reach him.

The victim's only son Mamun Ferdous, a textile engineer, went to Sabujbagh Police Station at midnight to file a general diary in this regard. Officer-in-charge of the police station concerned told him that an unidentified body was lying in the National Heart Foundation.

They rushed to the National Heart Foundation but by that time the body was sent to Dhaka Medical College morgue for autopsy. Later, they identified Atiar at the hospital morgue.

When Atiar's body was brought to his house, his only daughter Farzana Rahman, a master's student of the Department of Economics, Dhaka University, burst into tears, "We all were supposed to visit our village home with our father. Now we will go, but taking my father's body."

Morgue sources said they found dark mark in the victim's eyes and marks of injury to his head and throat.

A doctor at the Forensic Medicine Department seeking anonymity told The Daily Star that the killers strangled Atiar.

A murder case was filed with Kafrul Police Station.

The law enforcers started raiding different places in the city yesterday, but could not arrest anyone as of 9:00pm.