Gopal Krishna Muhuri, the Principal of Nazirhat College, was gunned down by unidentified assailants in his house at the port city of Chittagong yesterday morning.

Family sources said the gunmen, wearing masks, stormed their residence at Jamal Khan Road at about 7.30 a.m. and asked Muhuri about the hideout of Tayebur Rahman, the BCL General Secretary of the Fatikchhari upazila unit.

As the 60-year-old freedom fighter told them he knew nothing about Tayebur, the hooligans shot him at point blank range.The bullets pierced his right ear and came out through the left one blowing open his head. He died on the spot.

The assailants were whisked away in an auto-rickshaw without any resistance.

Muhuri's body was found slumped in the chair where he had been reading a newspaper. When the IGP (Chittagong range), who rushed to the spot after the killing, wanted to cover the body with a piece of cloth, Muhuri's bereaved wife objected.

She said she wanted to show people how the country was now being run and what the real law and order situation was.

Muhuri joined the college in 1964 and the National University authorities recently extended his service by two years when he turned 60. This angering the vested group.

Home Minister Altaf Hossain, who is now in the port city to attend the first law and order meeting of the district, rushed to the spot along with the Labour and Employment Minister, Abdullah Al Noman, IGP Moddabir Hossain Chowdhury and other high officials.

But they had to face a violent demonstration of the local Chhatra League, student wing of the Awami League, the Juba League, the Hindu-Buddha-Christian Oikya Parisad (an umbrella group of religious minorities). Police made baton charges to disperse the demonstrators.

The home minister directed police officials to arrest the killers within 24 hours.

When the ministers and the senior police officials were leaving the house, they again fell prey to public anger. The home minister refused to answer when local journalists asked for his reaction.

M. Idris, the President of the local journalists' union and a former freedom fighter, burst into tears and asked the employment minister whether the freedom fighters were at all safe.

The minister described the killing as brutal and said: "I'm a local MP and I'll continue my efforts to hunt down the killers. During my student life I got help from Muhuri. I knew him personally, he was a man of strong principles and his killers will be brought to book."

Muhuri's wife told reporters that someone with a vested interest in the college's property had long been trying to grab it but had been unable to succeed due to her husband's strong opposition.

She said her husband had banned student politics on the college campus in 1975 and Islami Chhatra Shibir, student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami. But, led by its top terrorist, Nasir, it had made several abortive attempts to enter the campus in a bid to revive student politics.