"They entered his room in the fifth floor and shoved his friend aside and then hacked him to death. He was a listed target of the Islamist militants," Imran H. Sarker, head of Bangladesh Blogger and Activist Network told AFPPolice confirmed Chakrabarti had been murdered by a group of half a dozen people in the capital's Goran neighbourhood, although they had no details on his background or the motive for the killing.
"There were six people who knocked his door, saying that they were looking to rent a flat," Muntashirul Islam, a deputy police commissioner, told AFP. "Two of them then took him to a room and then slaughtered him there," Islam added."His wife was in the flat but she was confined to another room."
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| Niloy |
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| His body being removed |
"He was critical against religions and wrote against Islamist, Hindu and Buddhist fundamentalism. He was a founding member of a rationalist organisation," Mohiuddin, who is now based in Berlin, told AFP by phone.
Activist groups say they fear that Islamist hit squads have hit lists which contain the full names and addresses of the bloggers. Bangladeshi authorities banned the hardline Islamist group Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT) following Das's murder in May, after facing accusations that they were doing too little to stop such attacks.
In a recent petition addressed to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, authors including Salman Rushdie and Margaret Atwood called on her government "to do all in their power to ensure that the tragic events of the last three months are not repeated, and to bring the perpetrators to justice". "We are gravely concerned by this escalating pattern of violence against writers and journalists who are peacefully expressing their views," said the petition.
Bangladesh is an officially secular country, but more than 90 percent of its 160 million people are Muslim.
-NDTV Image Credit: (Getty)
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