The victim is Moulana Jahangir Alam, 40, businessman and owner of a cosmetic shop in the city.

The incident occurred when Alam was returning home in a rickshaw from the shop at around 10:00pm, sources said.

A group of men in a microbus intercepted his rickshaw at an alley near his house at Nasirabad and kidnapped him at gunpoint.

Later, they called up Alam's family and made the ransom demand.

Sources suspect his abductors belong to a criminal group of Nasirabad's Al-Falah Goli (alley), a hotbed of criminal and other antisocial activities, and have ties with notorious Shibir cadre Gittu Nasir.

Police said they are trying follow up all possible leads to the identity and whereabouts of the abductors. "We are trying to catch the culprits and rescue Jahangir," Meah Luthfar Rahman Chowdhury, the deputy commissioner (north) of Chittagong Metropolitan Police told this correspondent.

The victim's younger brother Jan-e-Alam filed a case with Khulshi police yesterday.