Another 'atheist' blogger hacked to death in Bangladesh

A masked crowd of people wielding machetes hacked a secular blogger to death in north-eastern Bangladesh in the third deadly attack in the country since the beginning of this year, police said.

Ananta Bijoy Das wrote blogs Mukto-Mona, a website once moderated by Avijit Roy, a Bangladeshi-born US writer who was himself hacked to death in February. Das was killed in the city of Sylhet, reported the BBC.

A friend of Das said that the blogger was on an alleged hit list of atheist bloggers held by Islamist militants and received death threats for his writing.

Roy, who moderated the website and spoke out against religious intolerance, was killed in a machete attack while he visited the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka in February.

His murder had sparked widespread street protests from students and social activists, who accused the law enforcement authorities of failing to protect critics of religious bigotry.

Another blogger, Washiqur Rahman, too, was hacked to death in Dhaka in March.

An Islamist has been taken into custody over Roy's murder, while two madrassa students have been nabbed over Rahman's killing.