Unidentified attackers hacked a Hindu tailor to death near his workplace in Gopalpur upazila of Tangail district near Dhaka on Saturday.

Unidentified attackers hacked a Hindu tailor to death near his workplace in Gopalpur upazila of Tangail district near Dhaka on Saturday.

Police and eyewitness said three young men, who came on a motorcycle, hacked Nikhil Chandra Joarder (50) and left him dead on the spot.

“They came on a motorcycle and attacked him as he sat on a roadside. They hacked him on his head, neck and hand,” deputy chief of Tangail district police Aslam Khan, told AFP.

They also left behind a bag in which several bomb-like objects were found. A bomb disposal unit rushed to the spot .

Police suspect a “derogatory” comment Joarder made about Prophet Muhammad might be the reason for the attack. Local Muslims had filed a complaint against him then. He was charged with hurting religious sentiments and spent three weeks in jail.

“But the trial did not proceed after the complainants withdrew the charges,” Abdul Jalil, the police chief of Gopalpur sub-district, told AFP.

The Islamic State group-affiliated Aamaq news agency issued a statement saying “elements of the Islamic State stabbed to death by knife a Hindu in Tangail in Bangladesh who was known for insulting Prophet Muhammad”. It did not give further details.

The murder came less than a week after suspected Islamist militants hacked to death two gay rights activists in the capital Dhaka, and about 10 days after the murder of Rajshahi University professor A.F.M. Rezaul Karim Siddiquee.

In February suspected Islamists had decapitated a top Hindu priest inside a temple complex in a northern district, in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group.

The attack was similar to recent killings of atheist bloggers, academics, religious minorities and most recently a gay rights activist in Bangladesh by radical Islamists. Five people have already been killed in such attacks this year and nine were killed last year.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Saturday blamed the “nexus” between the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the Jamaat-e-Islami over the targeted killings. However Ms. Hasina hoped the people will reject such destructive politics and all such plots to destabilise the country would be foiled.

Also read:

Bangladesh in recent times has seen a spate of attacks on secular and liberal thought. Bloggers, journalists and students have been brutally hacked to death by fundamentalist elements in the country.

This thread of violence by radical Islamists runs from the most recent murder of an English professor at Rajshahi University to the 1993, fatwa against author Taslima Nasreen following release of her book “Lajja”.

Here we take a look at timeline of the more recent attacks on secular bloggers in Bangladesh. > Read more