Hindu priest hacked to death in Bangladesh

A Hindu priest in Bangladesh was on Friday brutally hacked to death by three machete-wielding assailants, the third priest from the community to be killed this year in the Muslim-majority nation which has seen a string of vicious attacks by Islamists on minorities and secular activists.

Shymanondo Das, in his mid 50s, was attacked by three assailants riding a motorcycle who hacked him while he was plucking flowers for morning prayers at a garden in the Radhamodon Gopal Moth premises in Jhenaidah, said Jbahar Ali Sheikh, additional superintendent of police in Jhenidah.

“Three motorbike-borne assailants attacked (priest) Shymanondo Das with machetes....doctors declared him dead at Jhinaidah Sadar Hospital,” a police officer said. “To make sure he died, they rained multiple blows on his head and neck with sharp weapons,” a police official said.

Officer-in-charge of the nearby police station, Hafizur Rahman said Das was the priest of Radhamodon  Gopal Moth.

He said the killers quickly fled the scene, a pattern which was followed in previous several such Islamist attacks on secular or liberal activists and religious minorities. The attack on Das came days after suspected militants killed a Hindu monastery worker in northwestern Pabna.

On June 7, a 65-year-old Hindu priest was killed by three bike-borne assailants in the same district while he was on his way to a temple. In February, militants stabbed to death a 50-year-old Hindu priest at a temple in Bangladesh’s Panchagarh district and shot and wounded a devotee who went to his aid.

A Christian businessman was hacked to death on June 5 by unidentified machete-wielding men near a church, hours after the wife of the top anti-terror police officer was shot dead by religious extremists.

In a development related to the murder of the police officer’s wife, police on Friday nabbed two more suspects in the case. Chittagong police said two suspects, including one of the killers, were arrested in connection with the killing of SP Babul Aktar’s wife Mahmuda Aktar Mitu.