The body of Bangladeshi activist Xulhaz Mannan lies in a morque at a hospital in Dhaka on April 26, 2016.
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At least two unknown assailants hacked a Hindu tailor to death in central Bangladesh Saturday, police said, amid a rise in attacks on religious minorities by extremist groups in the Muslim-majority nation.
Nikhil Joarder, 50, was sitting in his tailoring shop in Dubail village around 12:30pm when two persons entered the shop and stabbed him with machetes, Aslam Khan, additional superintendent of Tangial (Gopalpur Circle) told The Daily Star.
A number of these have been claimed by Islamist militants.
“We are trying to track down the killers and called CID (Criminal Investigation Department) to probe the murder…(But) I will tell you nothing about the incident until the investigation is finished”, Tangail’s district police chief Saleh Mohammad Tanvir told reporters.
Islamic State claimed responsibility for the murder, the monitor group SITE said.
The attack on him was similar to recent killings of atheist bloggers, academics, religious minorities and most recently a gay rights activist in Bangladesh by radical Islamists.
Police said they suspected that a “derogatory” comment about Prophet Mohammed allegedly made by Joarder in 2012 might be the reason for the attack.
“But the trial did not proceed after the complainants withdrew the charges”, Abdul Jalil, the police chief of Gopalpur sub-district told AFP.
“But as far as we know that dispute ended peacefully”.
However, the government denies that global groups such as ISIL or al-Qaeda have a presence in the country.
The IS has also claimed responsibility for a spate of recent murders of foreigners, and Sufi, Ahmadi, Shia and Christian minorities. Analysts say militants now pose a growing danger in the South Asian country.
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Hindus make up Bangladesh’s largest religious minority, accounting for around 10 percent of the country’s 160 million inhabitants.
