Islamist student held for murder of Bangla university professor

Police rejects report of IS involvement in the crime

A student activist of an Islamist group was detained today in connection with the brutal killing of a secular Bangladeshi university professor, a day after ISIS claimed responsibility for the latest such attack on intellectuals and bloggers in the Muslim-majority country, reports PTI.

Hafizur Rahman, 21, was detained in connection with the murder of 58-year-old Rajshahi University Professor AFM Rezaul Karim Siddiquee in Rajshahi in northwestern Bangladesh.

"We detained for interrogation a student of the university suspecting his links to Professor Karim's murder. He is a second year student of the Public Administration department of the university," said officer in charge of Rajshahi's Boalia police station Shahadat Hossain. Rajshahi's police commissioner Mohammad Shamsuddin later said the detainee was an activist of fundamentalist Jamaat-e- Islam's student wing Islamic Chhatra Shibir and "we have started interrogating him".

Meanwhile, the police rejected reports of ISIS involvement in the horrific crime.

The US-based SITE Intelligence Group has yesterday reported that the dreaded terror group hacked the professor to death over his "calls to atheism". Calling such reports "unauthenticated", a police spokesperson said ISIS did not have any organisational existence in Bangladesh.

Earlier today, the murder case was handed over to the Detective Branch of Police after protests mounted over the murder with students of the university suspending classes and exams, demanding police action to track down the killers. The Professor of English literature was brutally murdered in the city's Shalbagan area yesterday in an attack that police say bears the hallmark of the previous blogger killings.

Two years ago, another Rajshahi University teacher AKM Shafiul Islam was similarly murdered. Though his murder was initially claimed by radical group 'Ansaral Islam', police later ruled out that possibility, saying he was murdered due to personal rivalry. Some years ago, two more professors of the state-run varsity had been killed.

There have been systematic assaults in Bangladesh in recent months specially targeting minorities, secular bloggers, intellectuals and foreigners.

Last year, four prominent secular bloggers were killed with machetes, one inside his own home.