A young 20-something Bangladeshi blogger was today hacked to death by suspected Islamists in Dhaka, a month after a prominent writer was also killed in a similar attack in the national capital.

Quoting witnesses at the scene, a police official said that while three people had attacked Washiqur Rahman Mishu, “we arrested two of the suspected killers from near the (murder) scene at Tejgaon Industrial area and have launched a manhunt for the third one”.

He 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
–Dhaka Police Official

The two arrested for suspected involvement are a madrasa student from Chittagong, and a student of a madrasa in Dhaka’s Mirpur area, police said.

Police also claimed that they have seized three meat cleavers from the scene. According to witness accounts, Mishu’s face was disfigured as the miscreants hacked him mainly on the face.

A private TV channel reported that Mishu used to work for an NGO as well.

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

Mishu was the the third blogger to be killed by suspected Islamists in the past two years, with Rajeeb Haider being the first, murdered  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 is underway to bring Roy’s killers to justice.

Investigators claim that the Ansarullah Bangla Team, an Islamic extremist organization, was involved in the murders of both Roy and Haider.

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Published: 30 Mar 2015,04:23 PM IST

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