Police in Bangladesh have arrested three men in connection with the murder of a Hindu man, the latest in a series of savage killings that has terrorised the country. The murder has been claimed by the Islamic State terror group.
Nikhil Chandra Joarder, 52, a tailor, was hacked to death with machetes at the weekend in the central city of Tangail. A Bangladeshi franchise of Isis, which has claimed several lethal attacks in recent months, said it killed him for blasphemy by insulting the Prophet Muhammad.
The murder continues a sharp increase in the number of attacks by Islamist groups linked to Isis or al-Qaeda.
Four people were killed in April, culminating in the double murder last week of Xulhaz Mannan, a pioneering gay rights activist and editor of Bangladesh’s only LGBT magazine, who was hacked to death in his home together with Tanay Mojumdar, a friend and colleague.
Isis has claimed seven attacks since the start of the year but the administration of the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, continues to deny that the group has any foothold in the country.
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Instead, ministers accuse groups within the opposition, notably the country’s largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, of creating the violence to destabilise the government.
Police confirmed that the men arrested in Tangail include a local leader of Jamaat-e-Islami and an activist with the opposition Bangladesh National Party, as well as the head of a local madrassa, or Islamic school.
The government has been accused of allowing impunity to killers by concentrating on targeting the opposition.
Jamaat-e-Islami does have ties to militant groups and the current spate of murders began in 2013 as its leaders were put on trial for war crimes committed during Bangladesh’s war of independence in 1971.
Observers fear that what began as a local dispute has now intensified into a fully-fledged Islamist terror campaign. The government’s fixation on the opposition and its denial that terror groups have infiltrated Bangladesh also appear to have paralysed the security forces. Despite several arrests, no one has been charged with any of the recent murders.
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“We are here because of the denial syndrome within the government and the failure of law enforcement agencies to bring the perpetrators to justice,” said Iftekharuzzaman, director of Transparency International Bangladesh.
“I fear that failure to control this trend towards impunity will see this violence and ruthlessness become the ‘new normal’ for Bangladesh.”
