3 suspects detained for murder of Hindu tailor in Bangladesh

Dhaka: Bangladesh police on Sunday detained three persons, including one from fundamentalist group Jamaat-e-Islami and an activist from opposition BNP, in connection with the killing of a Hindu tailor who was brutally hacked to death by machete-wielding ISIS militants.

Nikhil Chandra Joarder, 50, a resident of the Tangail district, was hacked to death on Saturday by three assailants who entered his house-cum shop and slit his throat.

Three persons, including an activist of key-opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party and a local leader of fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami, have been detained in connection with the murder, police said.

"They have been detained today for questioning in connection with Nikhil Chandra Joardar's murder yesterday as part of the investigation," Tangail's additional superintendent of police Mohammad Aslam Khan said.

Hours after the murder, US-based private SITE Intelligence Group posted a statement saying the Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack.

ISIS' Amaq Agency reported the group's responsibility for killing the Hindu tailor for blasphemy in Tangail district in Bangladesh, it said in a tweet.

The local media reports said that Nikhil served three months of imprisonment in 2012 when he was arrested for blasphemous comments.

Police said the people in the neighbourhood feared he might have drawn the Islamists wrath owing to his earlier comments.

"We are trying to track down the killers and called CID (Criminal Investigation Department) to probe the murder," said Tangail's district police.

There have been systematic assaults in Bangladesh in recent months specially targeting minorities, secular bloggers, intellectuals and foreigners.

In the recent attacks, a liberal professor was brutally hacked to death last Saturday by machete-wielding ISIS militants who slit his throat near his home in Rajshahi city.

Two days later on Monday, Bangladesh's first gay magazine editor was brutally murdered along with a friend in his flat in Dhaka by Islamists.

In February, a head priest was killed at a Hindu temple in an area bordering India, the first attack by the ISIS targeting the community.

Last year, four prominent secular bloggers were killed with machetes, one inside his own home.

In most of the cases, Islamic State or al-Qaeda in Indian Sub Continent claimed the responsibility.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, however, repeatedly denied existence of any foreign terrorist groups in the country and attributed the deadly attacks on homegrown extremists backed by main opposition outside parliament BNP and its crucial ally fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami.