A 62-year-old Hindu trader was hacked to death by unidentified assailants inside his shop in Trishal upazila of Bangladesh’s Mymensingh district, police said on Tuesday.
The killing took place on Monday night at the Bogar Bazar intersection, Trishal Police Station officer-in-charge Muhammad Firoz Hossain told news portal bdnews24.com.
The victim, Susen Chandra Sarkar, owned Bhai Bhai Enterprise and hailed from Southkanda village. According to police, the attackers assaulted Sarkar with sharp weapons, left him critically injured inside the shop, and pulled down the shutters before fleeing.
Family members, who had been searching for him, later opened the shop and found Sarkar lying in a pool of blood. He was rushed to Mymensingh Medical College Hospital, where doctors declared him dead.
“My father had no known enemies. After brutally killing him, the criminals looted several hundred thousand taka from the shop,” his son, Sujan Sarkar, said, demanding swift identification and exemplary punishment for those responsible.
The murder is the latest in a series of violent incidents affecting Bangladesh’s minority communities. Hindus make up a small minority in Bangladesh, about 13.1 million people, or roughly 8% of the country's population of 170 million, while Muslims make up 91%.
The Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council, an umbrella group representing minority communities, says it documented more than 2,000 incidents of communal violence since the ouster of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in a mass uprising in August 2024.
The group recorded at least 61 killings, 28 instances of violence against women, among them rape and gang rape, and 95 attacks on places of worship involving vandalism, looting and arson. It has also accused the Yunus-led administration of routinely dismissing or downplaying reports of such violence.
Bangladesh will hold parliamentary elections on February 12 - the first since the ouster of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in massive country protests in August 2024.
(With inputs from PTI)