Sad News: Bangladeshi university professor hacked to death in Rajshahi

A university professor was hacked to death in Bangladesh, in an assault authorities say is much like several killings of lay bloggers and atheist activists before months.

He was attacked to the university from his dwelling by unidentified assailants while on his way with machetes.

Last year, four notable lay bloggers were killed with machetes.

Deputy police commissioner Nahidul Islam told AFP news agency that Siddique was involved in ethnic programmes, and had set up a school at Bagmara, a former bastion of outlawed Islamist group Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB).

Late last year members of JMB were detained over an assault on an Italian Catholic priest.

Earlier this month a Bangladeshi law student who’d expressed lay views online died when he was hacked with machetes and then shot in the capital, Dhaka.

The four bloggers killed last year had all appeared on a list of 84 “atheist bloggers” drawn up by Islamic groups in 2013 and broadly circulated.

There also have been assaults on members of religious minorities including Shia, Sufi and Ahmadi Muslims, Christians and Hindus. And two foreigners, an Italian aid worker and a Japanese man, were also shot dead in seemingly arbitrary attacks.

The so-called Islamic State group has said it carried out many of the strikes – but this is not independently verified.

Bangladesh is officially secular but critics say the government has neglected to properly address the assaults.