Fourth Bangladeshi blogger hacked to death

In addition to police, Imran Sarker, who heads the Blogger and Online Activists’ Network in the nation, confirmed the attack.

He said five assailants had entered the flat after the Friday prayers and killed him. He was an activist of the “Ganajagaran Mancha”, the forum demanding a ban on Islamist parties and death penalty for convicted war criminals.

The incident took place barely two months into the brutal killing of blogger and online activist Ananta Bijoy Das, which itself followed the killing of Oyasiqur Rahman Babu.

Unidentified attackers forced Niloy Neel’s wife and sister-in-law into an adjoining room before hacking him to death, sub-inspector of police Mohammad Khairuzzaman said by phone.

In May, terror group Al Qaeda’s Indian offshoot had claimed responsibility for the killing of secular bloggers in Bangladesh whom it described as “blasphemers”.

“We primarily came to know that the victim was a blogger”, the police official said. Roy’s death, for instance, prompted the country’s Law Commission to comment on the “general” and “helpless” way people are being targeted in the country that has, in turn, compromised faith in the judicial system. “While Avijit and I were being ruthlessly attacked, the local police stood close by and did not act”, Rafida told Reuters.

AB is also suspected to be behind the murders of blogger Roy who was hacked to death in a similar manner near the Dhaka University premises on February 26.

Tragically, these three deaths are not an aberration.

In March, Washiqur Rahman, 27, was hacked to death by two men with knives and meat cleavers just outside his house as he headed to work at a travel agency in the capital, Dhaka. “Nine of them are already killed and many of them were attacked”.