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An Auckland woman who returned to Bangladesh on family business was drugged before being murdered and stuffed into a barrel by her brother-in-law, a Bangladesh newspaper says.
The Daily Star said the body of Afroza Akhter Miah of Mt Eden was found dumped on a road in the capital, Dhaka, last Wednesday.
Her murder has shocked the Bangladesh community in Auckland where Mrs Miah, whose nickname was Polly, was involved with charity work.
She had been in Bangladesh about a month to attend to some property she owned there with her husband, Abdur Rahim Miah.
The newspaper said Mr Miah's brother, Belal Hussain, had confessed to organising the murder. Mrs Miah was drugged with sleeping pills before being strangled with her scarf by a hitman who was paid about $3000.
Mrs Miah's brother, Mohammed Islam, who lives in Sandringham, said yesterday that his sister was a kind and helpful woman who donated a lot of money to charity and did volunteer work with the elderly.
"She was always happy and loved her friends."
She was involved in the Bangladesh community in Auckland. "Everybody has been asking what happened. They can't go to work, they cried."
Mrs Miah had lived in Auckland since 1993 and has two New Zealand-born sons, Ibrahim, 13, and Raiham, 7.
The dead woman's husband said he wanted a "proper investigation" into what had happened and would go to the police today.
He had no idea why his brother would have organised his wife's murder. "It was a big shock."
The Daily Star said Mrs Miah had returned to Bangladesh on April 29 to register a piece of land in her name in the Bashundhara housing project in Badda, for which she had been paying regular instalments.
On the morning of May 22, around 8am, she went to inspect the land and have it registered and went to Mr Hussain's office near Dhaka to take him with her.
It was alleged Mr Hussain drugged her by giving her a drink laced with sleeping pills before the hitman strangled her.
The pair then placed Mrs Miah's body inside the barrel and handed it over to a rickshaw-van puller to have it disposed of.
The barrel was left on a roadside, where locals discovered it and informed the police.
Mr Hussain was arrested when he went to the hospital morgue to see the body.
Police seized four other barrels from his office with the same serial numbers found on the one from which the body was recovered.
Mr Islam said chemicals had been used to try to conceal the identity of the body.
He was determined to get to the truth of what happened to his sister and had contacted the police in New Zealand.
