Dhaka, August 7, 2015: A gang of about six men, armed with machetes and cleavers, hacked a blogger to death in Bangladesh on Friday, marking the fourth such murder of a secular writer in the South Asian nation since the beginning of this year.
Forty-year-old Niloy Chakrabarti, who was known for his atheist views, was killed at his home around noon in Goran near Dhaka.
"The men entered Niloy's house, pushed aside his wife and a friend, and hacked him to death. Earlier this year they killed the three secular bloggers on the street. Now they have killed another blogger entering his house in a daring attack," said Imran H. Sarker, who leads the Blogger and Online Activist Network in Bangladesh, in an interview.
Police in Dhaka told reporters the assailants almost severed the victim's neck with sharp weapons to ensure he was dead.
Hours later, media outlets received a claim of responsibility for the murder from a group claiming to be the Bangladesh wing of al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent.
Mustafizur Rahman Bhuiyan, the officer - in-charge of Dhaka's Khilgaon police station, said the assailants tricked their way into Chakrabarti's house.
"One man knocked on the door of Chakrabarti and said that he was looking for a flat on rent. After Chakrabarti apparently agreed to help him and welcomed him in his fifth-floor apartment, other men who carried sharp weapons forced into the house," Bhuiyan told VOA by telephone.
"Two of them took Chakrabarti into a room and hacked him to death."
Bhuiyan said the assailants appeared to have timed the attack to take place when most of the victim's male neighbors were away for Friday prayers.
Chakrabarti wrote for a Bengali language blog called "Istishan," meaning "station" or "railway station" in Bengali. He used the pen name of Niloy Neel and was critical of fundamentalism in all religions.
The blogger, who worked with a non-government organization, was also an activist with Dhaka's Gonojagoron Mancho or National Awakening Platform - a group that supports Bangladesh's war crime tribunal and seeks the execution of all who were involved in war crimes during the 1971 war. >more...

  DHAKA, Bangladesh, February 27, 2015 An Atheist blogger who has written nearly a dozen books advocating liberal secular writing -- in predominantly Muslim Bangladesh -- was found hacked to death with a machete Thursday, authorities said.
Avijit Roy, who started his blog "Free Mind," was a well-known Atheist writer in the country that is home to the world's fourth-largest Muslim population. Of Bangladeshi decent, Roy was a U.S. citizen revered for his writings by numerous colleagues.
Thursday, as he and his wife returned to their home, the couple were pulled off a rickshaw and attacked in the street by machete-wielding assailants, Britain's The Guardian reported. Roy was pronounced dead after he arrived at a hospital. His wife, Rafida, lost a finger and was seriously injured.
Nonbelievers of the Muslim faith, particularly those who express their beliefs through the media, have long been targeted by Islamic extremists in Bangladesh. In fact, almost exactly two years ago another Atheist blogger, Ahmed Rajib Haider, was killed in the exact same manner -- hacked with machetes as he left his home in Dhaka. Five members of the Islamic militant group Ansarullah Bengali Team were ultimately arrested for the murder.
It was not immediately known whether investigators suspect the same group, or one similar, in Roy's death. Four writers have been murdered since 2004, the Guardian report said. Roy's father said his son had been receiving death threats via email and his social media channels.
Some hardline Muslim radicals in recent years have taken a violent stance regarding writings critical of Islam, with some even advocating public execution.
Police said they have recovered the machetes used in the attack but couldn't yet identify the responsible party.
"We found some old folded newspapers inside the bag along with some other things. It seems the machetes were wrapped with the newspapers," Shahbagh police official Sohel Rana told Bangladesh News.Doug G. Ware
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