Couple murdered in city

Unidentified criminals killed an elderly couple at their house in the capital's Dakkhinkhan yesterday.
The victims are Mahmuda Khatun, 60, and her husband Mohammad Nasir Uddin, 70, a retired warrant officer of Bangladesh army.
Inspector Kaykobad Kazi of Dakkhinkhan Police Station said the killers first strangled Mahmuda and as soon as her husband returned to the house from the kitchen market, they hacked him to death.
An almirah in the house was found flung open, but police could not say if it was a robbery.
Relatives said the couple had a feud with some neighbours over a boundary wall and adjacent land. They, however, could not say if that had anything to do with the double murder.
Police recovered the bodies around 4:00pm. Nasir was found lying in a pool of blood on the veranda of his tin-shed house, and Mukta in her bedroom with a rope tied around her neck.
Police found a bloodstained kitchen knife at the scene and detained a woman who would often come to the house to help the couple in domestic chores.
Major Mustak Ahmed, deputy director of Rab-1, told The Daily Star that in primary interrogation the detainee said she had gone to the house around 10:00am but Mahmuda asked her to come later.
When she got back to the house at 3:30pm, she found the bodies of the couple. As she let out a cry, neighbours rushed to the house.
Locals said they did not hear any sound before the woman screamed.
Aziz Ahmed, nephew of Nasir, said the couple had been living in the house for the last several years.
Mahmuda and Nasir have two sons and a daughter. One son is an army major posted in Rangpur cantonment and the other is vice-principal of a college in Banani. The daughter lives in Kalyanpur with her husband.