Staff Reporter :Criminals hacked a blogger to death in his rented house in the city’s Goran area on Friday afternoon.The victim was identified as Niloy Chatterjee, 40, said Khairuzzaman, Sub-Inspector (SI) of Khilgaon Police Station.”This is the fifth incident of murder of bloggers in the country since 2013,” the police official said. Quoting the victim’s family members, Deputy Commissioner (Media) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) Muntashirul Islam said, “Miscreants, numbering five to six, went to the building around 2:00pm saying that they wanted to rent a flat and then entered Niloy’s flat. But the victim’s wife replied them that they would not leave the flat suddenly. At one stage, they confined his wife, younger sister and a housemaid confined in a room. Two of them then took him in another room and then slaughtered him there. The gangsters fled the scene leaving Niloy in a pool of blood.”Replying to a question, he said Niloy had been working in a NGO. “We are yet to confirm whether he was a blogger. We are trying to gather more information about the matter,” the DC said.DMP’s Detective Branch Joint-Commissioner Krishnapada Roy told reporters, “There were signs of haphazard hacking on Niloy’s throat and neck.””The nature of the attack is very similar to those on other bloggers murdered earlier.” Upper parts of the body, particularly head and neck, were the main targets,” the police official said. Meanwhile, Ansar-Al-Islam, Bangladesh chapter of al-Qaeda in the Indian Sub-Continent, has claimed the responsibility of killing of Niloy terming him an enemy of Allah.In an email sent to media houses in Bangladesh, it said, “Alhamdulillah! Mujahidin of Ansar-Al-Islam (AQIS, Bangladesh Branch) carried out an operation to slaughter Niloy, an enemy of Allah and His Messenger (SM).Radical group Ansaruallah Bangla Team’s two suspected wings – Ansar Bangla 7 and Ansar Bangla 8 – had also claimed responsibility on social media for the deaths.Earlier, Bangladesh authorities banned the hardline Islamist group Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT) in May, after facing accusations that they were doing too little to stop such attacks.Talking to The New Nation, Imran H Sarkar spokesman of Ganajagaran Mancha said that he knew Niloy as an active blogger who used to write about the war crimes trial, human rights and minority communities rights in his blog.”I am embarrassed to raise any demand to the government for the arrest of the perpetrators as bloggers are being killed but no killer has yet been tried,” he said expressing disappointment.”The government should arrest the killer within the next 24 hours. Otherwise we will go for a tough action programme,” he warned.In his latest blog, which was posted on August 3, Chakrabarti asked why mosques were being air-conditioned, he said.Khilgaon Police Station Officer-in-Charge (OC) Mustafizur Rahman said that Niloy was killed in his flat on the top floor of a four-storey building around 1:45pm.The OC also rejected the allegation that police did not take general diary (GD) seeking security for his life with the police station around three months ago. Mustafiz said that the police have recovered the dead body adding that the dead body was sent to the Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) for autopsy report.
