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In a breakthrough, the CID today arrested two persons, both Bangladeshi Muslim nationals, one from West Bengal and the other from Mumbai, in connection with the gangrape of a 71-year-old nun at a convent school in Nadia district that caused a nation-wide outrage. ... The nun of Jesus and Mary Convent School was gangraped at Gangnapur in Nadia district of West Bengal in the early hours of March 14 which caused an outrage in the country and abroad

HAKA (Reuters) - A blogger was hacked to death by machete-wielding attackers in Bangladesh on Tuesday, the third killing of a critic of religious extremism in the Muslim-majority nation in less than three months. Ananta Bijoy Das, a blogger who advocated secularism, was attacked by four masked assailants in the northeastern district of Sylhet on Tuesday morning, senior police official Mohammad Rahamatullah told Reuters. Rahamatullah said Das was a 33-year-old banker. He was also editor of science magazine "Jukti", which means "logic", and on the advisory board of "Mukto Mona" (Free Mind), a website propagating rationalism and opposing fundamentalism that...

Last May, I wrote about the hacking death of Bangladeshi blogger Ananta Bijoy Das by Islamists. Das was the third blogger to be executed by Islamists in 2015. Well, now make it four. Islamists have murdered 40-year old Niloy Neel. Here is what the BBC has to say about it: The BBC’s Akbar Hossain in Dhaka says Mr Neel had filed a police report expressing fear for his life, but his complaints had not been not followed up.SNIP Neel, Das along with Avijit Roy and Washiqur Rahman were on a list of 84 bloggers Islamists wanted the government to put...

Muslims have beheaded two Christians in New Jersey, a cat in Sweden, and now an anti-jihad blogger...just this week. via Anti-Islamist blogger killed in Bangladesh: police | NDTV.com. h/t Atlas Shrugs Dhaka: A blogger who had been critical of Bangladesh’s Islamist groups was killed in the capital late on Friday, police said, a day after he attended a big rally against leaders of the country’s largest Islamic party. Protests championed by the country’s bloggers have seen thousands of people take to the streets demanding the execution of leaders of the Jamaat-e-Islami party who are under trial for war crimes. Clashes...

DHAKA: A masked gang wielding machetes hacked a secular blogger to death Tuesday in northeastern Bangladesh in the third such deadly attack by suspected Islamists since February. Police said that Ananta Bijoy Das had been murdered in broad daylight as he headed to work at a local bank in the city of Sylhet, an attack that fellow writers said highlighted a culture of impunity. Kamrul Hasan, commissioner of Sylhet police, said that a group of around four masked attackers had attacked Das with machetes at around 8.30am on a busy street in Bangladesh's fifth largest city. "They chased him down...

Neel’s murder is the fourth such brutal murder in the country. Machete-wielding masked men in May hacked to death 33-year-old Ananta Bijoy Das, a secular blogger, in Sylhet city. Assailants in February had killed 45-year old Avijit Roy, a Bangladeshi-born US national, here while his wife narrowly escaped the attack. A month after Roy’s killing, another blogger Washiqur Rahman was murdered in similar fashion in Dhaka but people in the neighbourhood nabbed two suspected killers from the scene and handed them over to police. All three killed were involved with the Ganajagaran Mancha. In May, terror group al-Qaeda in the...

There’s been a series of violent murders of Bangladeshi internet bloggers, accused of being atheists by Islamist groups—with four killed so far this year. […] Bonya Ahmed is herself a writer and was also married to perhaps the most famous atheist killed this year, Avijit Roy—the moderator of a popular online blog called “Free Thinking,” which defended secular and humanist ideas. She and her husband were attacked together in February. Bonya lost fingers and was scarred, but lived. Her husband was hacked to death with machetes in a manner that followed the same gruesome pattern of later killings. They had...

Bangladesh could drop Islam as the country's official religion following a string of extremist attacks against people of other faiths. The supreme court in the South Asia nation has began to hear arguments which challenge Islam's status as the official state religion. It comes after a spate of attacks against people of other religions such as Hindus, Christians, and minorities Shi'ites, which have been blamed on Islamic extremists. When Bangladesh was formed in 1971 after the nation split from Pakistan, it was declared a secular state. However, in 1988 the country's constitution was amended with Islam declared as the state...

Killing resembles recent attacks on religious minorities, police sayPolice are hunting for the killers of a Christian man hacked to death in northwestern Bangladesh on March 22. The murder was the latest in a series of attacks on religious minorities in the Muslim-majority country. Three attackers rode up on motorbikes and repeatedly stabbed Hossain Ali, 68, while he was taking a regular morning walk in Kurigram district. They then fled after detonating two small homemade bombs as local people tried to help the victim, police said. Ali, a retired Family Planning Department official, also fought against Pakistani troops in Bangladesh's...

Bangladeshi law student who criticized Islamism on his Facebook account has been attacked with machetes and killed, police said, the latest in a series of murders of secular activists and bloggers by suspected Islamist militants.

Two people have been hacked to death at an apartment, including an editor of a transgender magazine in the Bangladesh. Another person was also killed and one person injured when three attackers entered their apartment in Dhaka posing as couriers and attacked them with sharp weapons, police said on Monday. Julhas Mannan ran a transgender magazine Rupban and previously worked at the US embassy.

Gay rights activist, U.S. government employee one of two hacked to death by radical Islamists in Bangladesh THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Monday, April 25, 2016, 6:33 PM NEW DELHI — Unidentified assailants fatally stabbed two men in Bangladesh’s capital Monday night, including a gay rights activist who also worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development, police said, in the latest in a series of attacks targeting atheists, moderates and foreigners. Police said they suspected radical Islamists in the attack, which occurred two days after a university professor was hacked to death. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

A court in southern Bangladesh sentenced two Hindu schoolteachers to six months in jail for making "abusive" remarks about Islam that led a mob to attack their school, a magistrate said Tuesday.

Much to the distress of Indian leaders, on January 19 the Bangladesh army announced it had thwarted a coup attempt against the government, conceived and nearly executed by some mid-ranking officers. Five army officers, including a lieutenant colonel and two Majors have already been arrested, while a top army officer is under investigation. The attempted coup was instigated by Islamic radical military personnel, including some Bangladeshis living abroad and retired and serving officers. Ever since the India-friendly government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina came into office in December 2008, her arch-rival Begum Khaleda Zia and elements of Pakistan’s military establishment...

Bangladesh hanged Islamist party leader Motiur Rahman Nizami on Wednesday for genocide and other crimes committed during the 1971 war of independence from Pakistan, the law minister said, a punishment that risked provoking an angry reaction from his supporters. Nizami, head of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, was hanged at Dhaka Central jail after the Supreme Court rejected his final plea against a death sentence imposed by a special tribunal for genocide, rape and orchestrating the massacre of top intellectuals during the war. Nizami, 73, a former legislator and minister, was hanged at 12.01 a.m. local time, Law Minister Anisul Haq told...

The head of Bangladesh’s largest Islamist party was executed early Wednesday for his role in acts of genocide and war crimes during the country’s independence war against Pakistan in 1971, a senior government official said. Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan said Motiur Rahman Nizami, the 73-year-old leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, was hung at 12:10 a.m. Wednesday inside Dhaka central jail amid tight security. […] Nizami is the fifth senior official from opposition parties to be executed since 2013 for war crimes carried out during the 1971 war. Three other senior members of Nizami’s Jamaat-e-Islami party and a top leader of...

Two assailants armed with pistols and cleavers attacked Jogeswar Roy, 45, the head priest of Sri Sri Sant Gourio Math, at his home in the temple on Sunday morning, officials said. "The priest was preparing for morning prayers when they pounced on him and slit his head from the body at the verandah of his home inside the temple," said Shafiqul Islam, a government administrator in the sub-district Debiganj where the temple is located. Two devotees were wounded in the attack including one who was shot as he tried to save the priest, he added. The motive for the murder...

Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal has vetoed religious freedom legislation similar to that adopted by the federal government and nearly half of the states, he announced. He says he would have accepted the legislation if it only protected pastors, but can’t countenance the protection of other religious adherents who are not clergy. As with other religious freedom bills, Georgia’s had faced strong opposition from the media and corporations. The media, which tend to be ignorant, at best, of religious freedom, mischaracterized the bill as “anti-gay.” Corporations that manufacture or market their products in China, Saudi Arabia, and other locations with deadly...

A lecturer at Goldsmiths University in London has defended female circumcision and child marriage as legitimate responses to colonialism and a product of women’s “agency,” in a shocking seminar that has been uploaded to Soundcloud by one of her students.

The Muslims told the Detroit Free-Press that they were concerned about the religious implications of Cherry Hill Presbyterian Church's "Eggstravaganza!" They were also "troubled" by images of a bunny rabbit. "It really bothered my two kids," parent Majed Moughni, told the newspaper. "My son was like, 'Dad, I really don't feel comfortable getting these flyers, telling me to go to church. I thought churches are not supposed to mix with schools.' "