`KABUL (AFP) - In February, Shaima Rezayee was a rising star on Afghanistan's equivalent of MTV and adored by young hip Afghans. Three months later she was dead from a gunshot wound to the head at her Kabul home after receiving anonymous death threats.

Afghan police are "still investigating whether she was murdered or she committed suicide," Interior Ministry spokesman Lutfullah Mashal told AFP on Tuesday.

The circumstances behind her May 18 death remain murky, but either way it is likely it was linked to her fame as the host of the popular HOP music program on privately-run Tolo Television.

Two of the 24-year-old's brothers are in police detention, where they are being questioned in connection with her death.

Before being fired from Tolo in March, Rezayee had become a controversial figure, drawing flak from conservative mullahs who thought her airing of Bollywood, Turkish and Iranian tracks alongside Madonna was "un-Islamic".

But Rezayee had also attracted a loyal following among young Afghans who considered her an icon for her flirtatious manner, her western clothes and her banter with male television hosts.

Off-duty, she was equally unconventional wearing jeans and tight clothes, drinking alcohol and enjoying the company of male friends in a country where conversation between unrelated men and women is still frowned upon.

Many women in Afghanistan do not leave their houses without wearing an all-covering burqa.

Tolo director Saad Mohseni said Rezayee was dismissed because she was always late for work and not because of her on-screen image. She was sacked "for not observing the rules and regulations of the company. She did not come to work on time," he said.

Following her disappearance from TV screens, rumors spread around the Afghan capital that she had been kidnapped or assassinated by hardliners or even killed by her family to save their honour.

Days after she was fired, Rezayee told AFP by telephone: "I am alive and okay. I have not been kidnapped but I have received threatening phonecalls and am worried for my security."

This fact was confirmed by Nader Nadery, a member of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and one of Afghanistan's leading human rights activists.

"Rezayee came to our office to complain that she received lots of calls from unknown people and some of them were threatening," he said.

"She complained that she was sacked for no good reason from the TV and that after she was sacked the station hung announcements on the office noticeboard that she had been sacked for drinking alcohol and being unpunctual."

Nadery added: "When one of our colleagues went to Rezayee's home she withnessed signs of being beaten on her skin, on the side of her eye. Rezayee told our colleague that she was beaten by her brother."

There are conflicting reports on whether the former TV star could have taken her own life.

Jawed Jawed, who is one of her two younger brothers in police custody and suspected of possible involvement in her death, said his sister killed herself because she had become isolated and depressed after losing her job.

"After she was sacked for no good reason she thought she had suddenly crashed. She was a famous TV star and she thought she had become nothing," Jawed told AFP when he was released for her funeral on May 20.

Noshin Kochi, 28, who worked alongside Rezayee at Tolo said she had tried to commit suicide three times after she was sacked.

"She drove her car into a tree, she had tried to hang herself and the third time she tried to take an overdose of medicine," said Kochi, who was sacked from the TV station soon after Rezayee.

Friends and colleagues point out that not only did she go from stardom to nothing after her sacking, applying for a couple of jobs but getting nowhere, but also the rumours about her alleged smoking, drinking and her relations with men left her virtually ostracised from society.

But Shakeb Issar, another HOP music presenter, who says he receives daily phone threats from Islamic militants, disagrees that his good friend and colleague killed herself.

"Rezayee was killed and she did not commit suicide," he told AFP without elaborating.

Isaar, 22, said he had been living in fear since Rezayee's death and had been attacked and beaten up on several occassions since he had been working on the TV.

The post-mortem report indicated that Rezayee was killed by a gunshot to the right temple but was inconclusive as to whether she herself pulled the trigger.