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              Islamic State Claims Killing of Hindu in Bangladesh

   by Maaz Hussain

   The Islamic State (IS) group has claimed responsibility for an attack
   Saturday in which a Hindu tailor was hacked to death in central
   Bangladesh, the U.S.-based monitoring organization SITE Intelligence
   Group said.

   At least two machete-wielding assailants appeared in front of the
   tailoring shop of Nikhil Chandra Joardar in Tangail district's Dubail
   village and attacked him around noon Saturday, authorities said. The
   men fled on a motorbike.

   According to SITE, IS claimed to have killed Joardar because he had
   "blasphemed" the Prophet Muhammad.

   In 2012, Joardar was beaten up by local Muslims who alleged that he had
   abused the Prophet Muhammad in a comment.

   Similar to other attacks

   "Following complaint from Muslims, Joardar was arrested and spent about
   a month in jail. The attack on him with machetes resembles the previous
   killings of the (secular) bloggers and activists," Aslam Khan, a local
   police official, told VOA by phone.

   "We are going to investigate if his killing had any connection with the
   incidents of 2012," Khan said.

   Police at this point cannot confirm if any militant group was involved
   in this killing, he added.

   Joardar's killing on Saturday marks Bangladesh's fifth fatal hacking
   case in April in which Islamists are suspected to have been involved.

   After a law student known for his secular views was hacked to death
   earlier this month, a university teacher was also killed in a machete
   attack.

   And on Monday, two LGBT rights activists, one of whom was a U.S.
   Embassy employee, were murdered in Dhaka by a machete-wielding gang.

   IS claim refuted

   IS has claimed responsibility following several killings of secular
   bloggers and activists.

   However, authorities in Bangladesh have maintained that the Sunni
   terrorist group has no foothold in the country and local home-grown
   militants engineered all of the killings.

   On Saturday, Bangladesh's home minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal said the
   IS claim that the militant group killed Joardar was baseless.

   "Home-grown militants are the killers here. The claim that Islamic
   State is behind such killings is a part of conspiracy," Kamal said.

   Earlier this week, referring to the series of killings, Prime Minister
   Sheikh Hasina said that they were being engineered by the opposition
   alliance led by Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and
   its ally, Jamaat-e-Islami.

   However, top leaders of BNP have dismissed the charge by Sheikh Hasina.

   "For political reasons, the (Hasina-led) government is shielding the
   criminals behind these killings and slapping the blame on the
   opposition alliance. BNP has no connection with terrorism and such
   killings," Nazrul Islam Khan, a national standing committee member of
   BNP, told VOA.

   Former university professor Ajoy Roy, father of Bangladeshi-American
   secular blogger Avijit Roy who was hacked to death by Islamists in
   Dhaka last year, alleged that the government is not aggressively
   investigating the cases of the past killings.

   "An ambiance of impunity is encouraging the killer groups to launch new
   attacks," Ajoy Roy said. "Unless the killers in the past cases are
   brought to justice, I think, we will not see an end to such killings."
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References

   1. http://www.voanews.com/content/islamic-state-claims-killing-of-hindu-in-bangladesh/3310336.html