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Hindu trader stabbed to death in Bangladesh's Mymensingh, three days before polls
The deceased, identified as 62-year-old Susen Chandra Sarkar, was hacked to death inside his shop.
A Hindu businessman was killed in Bangladesh's Mymensingh on Monday, a couple of days before the country votes to elect their Prime Minister. Bangladesh will hold its general elections on February 12.
The victim, identified as 62-year-old Susen Chandra Sarkar, was a rice trader. Sarkar was hacked to death inside his shop, following which the perpetrators closed the shutters and fled, bdnews 24 cited Trishal Police Station chief (OC) Muhammad Firoz Hossain as saying.
The incident took place at 11 pm in Mymensingh's Trishal. Sarkar's shop, called the “Bhai Bhai Enterprise” is located at the Bogar Bazar intersection in the Upazila, while the victim was a resident of Southkanda village.
According to OC Firoz, unidentified assailants attacked Sarkar with a sharp weapon and then left him inside the shop, pulling down the shutters. The victim's family, while searching for him, opened the shutters of the shop and found him covered in blood, bdnews 24 cited Firoz as saying.
The victim's family members then rushed him to Mymensingh Medical College Hospital, where he was declared dead. Sarkar's body will be sent for postmortem examination, and legal action has been initiated, OC Firoz said. The police station chief said he had visited the crime scene after the incident.
The victim's son, Sujan Sarkar, said the assailants had stolen money from the shop, while adding that his father had no enmity with anyone. “We have had a rice business for a long time. No one had any enmity with us. The criminals stole several hundred thousand taka from the store after they brutally killed my father,” Sujan told bdnews 24.
This comes amid a spate of attacks on minorities in Bangladesh, including the killing of Dipu Chandra Das in Mymensingh by a mob in December last year. Das, a garment factory worker, was beaten and set on fire by a mob in Bhaluka over alleged blasphemy.
In another incident, 38-year-old Rana Pratap Bairagi, a Hindu businessman who also served as the acting editor of a newspaper, was shot by unidentified assailants in Jessore district in January.
Within 24 hours of Bairagi's death, another Hindu man, a grocery shop owner, was reportedly killed after being attacked with sharp weapons in Narsingdi, on the outskirts of Bangladesh's Dhaka. India had, following these incidents, urged Bangladesh to “swiftly and firmly” deal with attacks on minorities. “Such communal incidents need to be dealt with swiftly and firmly. We have observed a troubling tendency to attribute such incidents to personal rivalries, political differences or extraneous reasons,” external affairs ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal had said.
