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Monastery worker killed in attack

Bangladesh police said Nityaranjan Pande has been working in the monastery for the past 40 years.

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Though no group has yet taken responsibility for the killing, local police say it bears the marks of similar attacks carried out by Islamist militants.

Bangladesh is reeling from a wave of murders of secular and liberal activists and religious minorities that have left almost 50 people dead in the last three years. “In recent years he was the head of its office [Shri Shri Thakur Anukulchandra Ashram] staff”. Today as he was walking, several attackers hacked him in the neck.

He was attacked near the ashram in Pabna’s Hemayetpur Upazila during his regular morning walk, added Khan.

“There was no eyewitness to the attack as it happened very early in the morning”, district police head Alamgir Kabir told AFP.

No one has claimed responsibility for the deadly attack so far.

Bangladesh is reeling from a wave of murders of secular and liberal activists and religious minorities that have left almost 50 people dead in the last three years.

Few days ago, a Hindu priest was hacked to death in Jhenaidah, a Christian grocer in Natore and the wife of a crime-burster senior police officer in Chittagong.

Most of the latest attacks have been claimed either by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group or by a South Asian branch of al-Qaeda. The security clampdown was launched a day after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina promised to intensify a nationwide anti-terror security clampdown.

Militants have killed more than 30 people in Bangladesh, including members of religious minorities, liberal bloggers and academics, since February a year ago.

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Hindus and Christians make up about 10 per cent of Bangladesh’s 160 million population.

Victims of the attacks by suspected Islamists have included secular bloggers gay rights activists and followers of minority religions