Calcutta, Feb. 23: Business rivalry was the likely motive behind the murder of Kasba realtor Snehangshu Rakshit, whose body was found in Sonarpur yesterday, police said.

A preliminary post-mortem report today suggested that Rakshit, 52, was killed on Tuesday night, the day he left his Kasba home and went missing.

He had been gagged and strangled before his body was dumped in a pond, the police said.

Investigations have revealed that the murder was the fallout of a business rivalry, an officer said.

“It appears that Rakshit was locked in a dispute with some people in the real estate business. Now our primary job is to find the people with whom he had been in touch over his business,” said Praveen Kumar, superintendent of police, South 24-Parganas.

Rakshit’s body, wrapped in a bed-sheet, was fished out of the pond around 11am yesterday. There were blood clots on his mouth and nose.

His elder son Satyaki had told the police that his father’s cellphone had been switched off on Sunday and Monday. “When we asked him about it, he told us that he was disturbed because of a number of threat calls.”

The police are banking on the phone’s call statement to crack the case. “We received the statement today. There are hundreds of numbers from which calls had been made to Rakshit’s cellphone,” said an officer of Kasba police station.