An assistant sub-inspector of police was stabbed to death by a youth last night at a checkpoint at the capital's Gabtoli when a police team was searching the young man's bag.

Victim Ibrahim Mollah had been posted at Darus Salam Police Station for the past one and a half years.

The man who stabbed the ASI managed to flee but police arrested a youth who accompanied the assailant. Police sources said they seized a hand camera from the detainee, Masud.

Detailed information about the assailant, the detainee or the motive behind the killing could not be known.

However, Sheikh Maruf Hasan, additional commissioner (crime) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, told reporters at the police station around 1:00am today, "There is no militant link with the incident."

It came amid a heightened security in and outside the capital following the murders of two foreign nationals -- an Italian aid worker in the capital on September 28 and a Japanese farmer in Rangpur on October 3.

Faruqul Alam, inspector (investigation) of the police station, said a nine-member police team was making random searches at the checkpoint. The team stopped two youths, aged about 25, who were passing by the checkpoint around 9:00pm.

The two came to Gabtoli from Bogra by a bus, said Abu Taleb, driver of a microbus that the police team rented for patrolling.

Taleb, who was watching the incident from his vehicle parked nearby, said three to four policemen took the two youths to a dark corner inside Parbat cinema hall premises, around 20 yards from the checkpoint.

When the cops were about to search the youths, one of them managed to free himself from the grips of the policemen and ran away.

At this, all cops but Ibrahim chased him.

Meanwhile, Ibrahim continued to search the other youth, who suddenly stabbed him and fled.

"I saw the youth take out something from his waist and attack Ibrahim," Taleb told this correspondent.

Later, Taleb took Ibrahim to Suhrawardy Medical College Hospital where doctors declared him dead.

He was stabbed in the chest and abdomen and he died of excessive bleeding, said Rahat Nazma, a doctor at the emergency department there.

Father of an eight-year-old daughter and a two-year-old son, Ibrahim had been living with his family near the police station.