DHAKA: A local Sufi leader has been found hacked to death in Bangladesh in a suspected militant killing, police said Saturday, two weeks after Daesh claimed the murder of a liberal professor in the same northwestern district.
Mohammad Shahidullah, 65, had been missing since leaving home on Friday morning before villagers last night found his body in a pool of blood in a mango grove in Rajshahi.
It comes amid a troubling rise in violence against religious minorities, liberal activists and foreigners in Bangladesh, with six murders since the start of last month alone.
“He was not a famous Sufi. But there could be a possibility that he was killed by militants,” Rajshahi district police chief Nisharul Arif told AFP.
The police officer said the killing of the self-proclaimed Sufi master was “similar” to other recent hacking deaths of religious minorities carried out by attackers with machetes or cleavers.
“He was slaughtered from his neck and there are also some deep gashes in his throat,” Abdur Razzak, a local police official said.
Suspected militants been blamed for or claimed dozens of murders of atheist bloggers, liberal voices and religious minorities in recent years.
The Daesh group and a Bangladeshi branch of Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for several of the killings.
However the secular government in Dhaka denies that Daesh and Al-Qaeda are behind the attacks, saying they have no known presence in Bangladesh, and blames the killings on homegrown militants.
In September the member of a Sufi shrine and his assistant were murdered in the port city of Chittagong.
A long-running political crisis in officially secular Bangladesh has radicalized opponents of the government and analysts say extremists pose a growing danger.
The country has been on high alert in recent days after the country’s top court upheld the death sentence of a leader of Jamaat-e-Islami.
Motiur Rahman Nizami, who was convicted of murder, rape and orchestrating the killing of intellectuals during the country’s 1971 war of independence, is expected to hang within days following the Supreme Court’s verdict.
Mohammad Shahidullah, 65, had been missing since leaving home on Friday morning before villagers last night found his body in a pool of blood in a mango grove in Rajshahi.
It comes amid a troubling rise in violence against religious minorities, liberal activists and foreigners in Bangladesh, with six murders since the start of last month alone.
“He was not a famous Sufi. But there could be a possibility that he was killed by militants,” Rajshahi district police chief Nisharul Arif told AFP.
The police officer said the killing of the self-proclaimed Sufi master was “similar” to other recent hacking deaths of religious minorities carried out by attackers with machetes or cleavers.
“He was slaughtered from his neck and there are also some deep gashes in his throat,” Abdur Razzak, a local police official said.
Suspected militants been blamed for or claimed dozens of murders of atheist bloggers, liberal voices and religious minorities in recent years.
The Daesh group and a Bangladeshi branch of Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for several of the killings.
However the secular government in Dhaka denies that Daesh and Al-Qaeda are behind the attacks, saying they have no known presence in Bangladesh, and blames the killings on homegrown militants.
In September the member of a Sufi shrine and his assistant were murdered in the port city of Chittagong.
A long-running political crisis in officially secular Bangladesh has radicalized opponents of the government and analysts say extremists pose a growing danger.
The country has been on high alert in recent days after the country’s top court upheld the death sentence of a leader of Jamaat-e-Islami.
Motiur Rahman Nizami, who was convicted of murder, rape and orchestrating the killing of intellectuals during the country’s 1971 war of independence, is expected to hang within days following the Supreme Court’s verdict.
