Dhaka, March 30 (IANS) A blogger was hacked to death on Monday in Bangladesh’s capital city of Dhaka, police said.
Three people attacked Oyasiqur Rahman Babu using sharp weapons around 9.45 a.m. in Tejgaon industrial area soon after the online activist stepped out of his house, bdnews24.com quoted Tejgaon zone’s Deputy Police Commissioner Biplob Kumar Sarkar as saying.
He added that immediately after the incident, local residents caught two madrasa students and handed them over to police.
Two blood-stained meat cleavers were found at the scene of the murder.
The victim was rushed to the Dhaka Medical College and Hospital where doctors pronounced him dead, the police officer said.
Police identified Babu from the voter identity card found on him and the statements of the two assailant, identified as Zikrullah, a student of a Chittagong madrasa and Ariful, a student of Mirpur’s Darul Ulum Madrasa.
During interrogation, they told police that there was another accomplice named Abu Taher. The trio drew up the entire murder plan on Sunday.
According to Babu’s family, the 27-year-old blogger was working at a travel agency called Fareast Aviation as a trainer. He was mainly active on the Facebook where he used to write on religion, science and against communalism.
Protesting against the killing of Avijit Roy, he wrote on the banner of his Facebook page: “I am Avijit. Words cannot be killed.”
In a similar attack on February 26, blogger-writer Avijit Roy was killed on the Dhaka University campus. He had started the blog ‘Muktamona’ (free-thinkers). His wife and fellow blogger Rafida Ahmed Bonya was seriously injured in the attack.
Farabi Shafiur Rahman, who had earlier threatened to kill Avijit, was arrested, but the actual killers are yet to be identified.