Neel was done to death by five men who used machetes.
By Dileep Thekkethil
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BENGALURU: Secular Bangladeshi blogger Niloy Chowdhury (Niloy Neel) was hacked to death by unidentified assailants on Friday after he reportedly published posts that irked radical Islamic groups.
A group of five unidentified people stormed into Chowdhury’s apartment located in Dhaka and hacked him to death using machetes, according to police, said reports. The murder of Chowdhury is the fourth such incident in Bangladesh. Earlier in February, another Bangladesh-American blogger was hacked to death in Dhaka University campus.
A month after this another secular blogger, Oyeshiqur Rahman was attacked in Dhaka. This was followed by an murderous attack on Ananta Bijoy Das, in the north eastern city of Sylhet.
Niloy Chowdhury managed an active Facebook page under the name Niloy Neel and published articles related to giving capital punishment for the 1971 war criminals.
The police said the attack happened at around 1.30 PM today when the five assailants came to the apartment, posturing as tenants, looking for a house to rent in the Gotan area of Dhaka.
Police sources said they don’t have definite details about the motive behind the murder. But it is believed that the posts that appeared on his Facebook page could have instigated Muslim Fundamental group that planned the attack on the Bangladeshi blogger.
Close friends of Chowdhury remember him as a secular blogger and are shocked by what descended upon him on Friday afternoon.
The responsibility of earlier attacks on bloggers was claimed by Ansar Bangla, a lesser known group of Al Qaeda that is active in the Indian subcontinent. But as of now nobody has claimed the responsibility of the killing of Niloy Chowdhury.
The leader of a secular group that advocate capital punishment for war crime suspects said Chowdhury was an active member of his organization “Gana Jagaran Manch”. This particular group is Bangladesh’s largest Islamic party and had stood against Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan in 1971.