Publisher of books by atheist B’desh blogger hacked to death

A Bangladeshi publisher, who worked with slain atheist writer and blogger Avijit Roy, was on Saturday hacked to death by unidentified assailants here, shortly after two secular bloggers and another publisher of Roy were attacked in a separate incident.

Faisal Arefin Dipan, 43, was killed in his third-floor office in central Dhaka locality of Shabagh, very near the venue of months of demonstrations demanding capital punishment for Jamaat-e-Islami leaders and other fundamentalists who had collaborated with Pakistani troops during Bangladesh’s liberation war in 1971.

“Dipan died of stab wounds on the shoulder,” Muntasirul Islam, spokesperson of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP), said.

The killing of Dipan came just hours after unidentified assailants attacked two secular writers and another publisher of US national Roy’s books, leaving one of them in a critical condition, according 

to police.