Blogger hacked to death in Bangladesh

A month ago, Bangladeshi-American blogger Avijit Roy was killed in a similar manner

A Bangladeshi blogger was today hacked to death by suspected Islamists here, a month after a prominent writer was killed in a similar attack in the national capital.

"He visibly died on the spot as the assailants attacked him with machetes...Doctors declared him dead as he was rushed to the Dhaka Medical College Hospital," a police official told PTI identifying the victim as Washiqur Rahman Mishu.

Quoting the witnesses at the scene, the official said three people attacked Mishu but "we arrested two of the suspected killers from near the (murder) scene at Tejgaon Industrial area and launched a manhunt for the third one".

The victim was in his late 20s. The two arrested for suspected involvement are a Chittagong madrassa student and a student of a madrassa in Dhaka's Mirpur area, police said.

Police said they have seized three machetes used for meat cleaving from the scene. Witnesses said Mishu's face was distorted as the miscreants hacked him mainly on the face.

A private TV channel reported that Mishu used to work for an NGO and was also a blogger.

The murder came a month after Bangladeshi-American Avijit Roy, a secular blogger and science writer, was hacked to death in identical manner in Dhaka.

Mishu is the third blogger to be killed by suspected Islamists in the past two years. Rajeeb Haider was hacked to death in February 2013 in Dhaka.

A Dhaka court on March 18 indicted the chief of a banned Islamist outfit and seven students of a private university for the murder of Haidar while a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)-assisted investigation was underway to bring Roy's killers to justice.

Investigators found involvement of Ansarullah Bangla Team in both the murders.