Unidentified attackers hacked a Hindu monastery worker to death in Bangladesh on Friday, the latest targeted attack on minorities in the country.
The victim, 62-year-old Nityaranjan Pande, was taking his regular early morning walk when the attackers set upon him and killed him on the spot.
Police said there was no eye-witness to the attack taht happened very early in the morning. Alamgir Kabir, the head of police in the north-western district of Pabna, however, said "the killing bore the hallmarks of recent attacks by Islamist extremists on minorities and secular activists."
Pande had been working at the monastery for around 40 years. In recent years he was the head of its office staff.
"As a diabetic, every day he walks early in the morning. Today as he was walking, several attackers hacked him in the neck... He died on the spot," local police chief Abdullah Al-Hasan told AFP.
Most of the earlier attacks on minorities, bloggers and free thinkers were claimed by the Islamist militants, but there was no immediate claim of responsibility in this case.
Pande had been working at the monastery for 40 years. "He was a simple man. He had no enemies," local NGO worker Naresh Madhu told local news agency bdnews24.
Since last January 2015, more than 40 people have been killed in a wave of extremist attacks on secular activists, academics, gay rights champions bloggers and religious minorities.
