Islamists butchered another blogger in Dhaka
Syeda Munawara Qazi
Dhaka, Bangladesh: Moving fast towards a radicalized Islamic society, another secular blogger was slit to death on holy day of Muslims—Friday. He was fourth secular blogger who had been killed this year by Islamic mobsters. Niladri Chaterjee was very active on social media.
Killers found him through a property dealer posed as potential renters asking to see the property where Mr. Chaterjee lived. It may be mentioned that a list of 84 bloggers targeted for death began to circulate in 2013 and Chaterjee was one of the listed bloggers.
According to Deputy Police Commissioner Mohammad Anwar Hossain, killers having beards forcefully enter the room of Chaterjee lashed his head and neck and ran away. Deceased had been receiving death threats from Islamists after the death of blogger Ananta Bijoy Dash. Islamists here have long clashed with other young people who advocate a secular Bangladesh, and in recent years they have begun to assassinate people who criticize Islam online and Chaterjee had been monitoring those attacks, some of which were aimed at his friends, and feared he would be next.
In mid-May, Chaterjee, who also used the name Niloy Neel, wrote on Facebook that he had been followed by a group of strangers on the street as he left an event commemorating another blogger. He reported the threat to the police but police did not take action and recommended to leave the country.
Imran H. Sarker who is the head of Blogger and Online Activist Network and whose life is also in danger said to Dispatch News Desk that Chaterjee had also received multiple online threats from Islamists.
It may be remembered that Islamists chased a blogger, Ananta Bijoy Dash, through the streets near his home in May in the northeastern city of Sylhet, before attacking him with machetes. In March, three men in Dhaka surrounded a travel agent named Oyasiqur Rhaman, cutting his head and neck with machetes. In February, a Bangladeshi-American blogger named Avijit Roy was attacked with machetes as he left a book fair. The leader of Al Qaeda’s branch in the Indian subcontinent, Asim Umar, published a video in May, claiming responsibility for the deaths of Roy whom he called blasphemer.
