Bangladeshi police launch crackdown on targeted killings
A Hindu man is the latest victim to be slain in an attack blamed on extremists.
DHAKA, Bangladesh — As Bangladeshi police began a weeklong offensive against suspected Islamist militants, a Hindu man was hacked to death Friday in the latest killing to be blamed on extremists.
The victim, Nityaranjan Pandey, 62, was attacked while on his morning walk in the western district of Pabna, where he had volunteered at a Hindu ashram for the last 40 years, residents said.
The acting general secretary of the ashram, Sri Jugol Kishore Ghosh, said he could not understand why Pandey was targeted shortly before 7 a.m. outside a mental hospital.
“We are yet to understand why they killed a person like Pandey who is such a gentle man, but weak from diabetes,” Ghosh said.
Pandey was the fourth person in the last week to be killed in a series of attacks by machete-wielding assailants targeting religious minorities, secularists, foreigners, gay rights activists and others that began more than a year ago but has accelerated in recent months. Three days earlier, a 69-yearold Hindu priest was hacked to death in the western district of Jhenaidah.
Islamic State said it had carried out that killing, one of many that the militant organization has claimed in recent months. Al Qaeda’s branch in the Indian subcontinent has also claimed several killings, raising the specter of international jihadism in this predominantly Muslim nation of 160 million people.
But Bangladesh’s government has rejected any allegation that international terrorist groups are active in the country and blamed the attacks on political rivals.
Prime Minister Sheik Hasina Wajed said at a news conference this week that she had evidence that political parties were behind the killings. Although she did not specify names, in the past she and members of her government have blamed Jamaat-e-Islami, the country’s leading Islamist party, for carrying out or sponsoring the attacks, which Jamaat has denied.
A day earlier, police announced they would begin a seven-day crackdown against Islamist militants across the country. News reports said police detained several hundred people, including members of Jamaate-Islami and its student wing, Islami Chatra Shibir, from various parts of the country.
On Sunday, the wife of a senior police official who had conducted raids against militant groups was killed in the port city of Chittagong. Since then, police have conducted raids and engaged in shootouts with suspected militants, reportedly killing at least nine people.
At least seven of those killed were members of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, a banned militant group, the independent Bangladesh Pratidin newspaper reported.
Security analysts had warned that attacks could increase during Ramadan, the Muslim holy month that began this week, as militants seek to make a statement.
But as Hasina, the head of the secular Awami League party, has clamped down on free speech, experts worry that the police crackdown could offer another pretext for her government to target its political opponents, including Jamaat-e-Islami.
Authorities until now have made scant arrests in the killings, saying some suspects have left the country, and appear powerless to stop further attacks.
The official response is increasingly unsettling to Bangladesh’s allies, including the United States, which views the country as an ally against terrorism and has refrained from criticizing Hasina’s government publicly.
A Christian man also was killed, in the northern district of Natore, this week.
Binoy Jyoti Kundu, general secretary in Pabna for the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council, a group that advocates for the rights of religious minorities, said the attacks were “a plan to destabilize our country.” Hindus are the largest religious minority in Bangladesh, with slightly less than 9% of the population, according to a 2011 census.
A police official in Pabna, Abdullah al Hassan, said Pandey’s body was handed over to ashram authorities after a post-mortem examination.
‘We are yet to understand why they killed a person like Pandey who is such a gentle man, but weak from diabetes.’ — Sri Jugol Kishore Ghosh, acting general secretary of the Hindu ashram where Nityaranjan Pandey volunteered