Another Mukto-Mona blogger, Ananta Bijoy Das, has been hacked to death by masked assailants in Subid Bazar area of Sylhet city.
Sylhet airport police station OC Gousul Hossain told the Dhaka Tribune that blogger Ananta came under attack around 8:30am on Tuesday when he was on his way to work at a bank from home.
Meanwhile, Al-Qaeda Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), in a post on justpaste.it. has claimed responsibility for brutal murder of freethinker-blogger Ananta Bijoy Das.
Ansar Al-Islam Bangladesh tweeted a link to the post around 12:30pm Tuesday.
On May 3, Al-Qaeda Indian Subcontinent leader Asim Umar, in video message, claimed responsibility for killing bloggers Avijit Roy, Oyasiqur Rahman Babu, Rajeeb Haider and Rajshahi University teacher AKM Shafiul Islam.
This is the third such deadly attack since the start of the year.
Meanwhile, the activists of the local Gonojagoron Moncho brought out a protest rally demanding immediate arrest of the killers.
Ananta was also the member of organising body of local Gonojagoron Moncho, said Sommilito Natto Parishad General Secretary Rajat Kanti Gupta.
Sommilito Natto Parishad General Secretary Rajat Kanti Gupta said: "Ananta was also the member of organising body of local Gonojagoron Moncho. He used to write in Mukto-Mona Blog."
Meanwhile, the activists of the local Gonojagoron Moncho brought out a protest rally demanding immediate arrest of the killers.
Ananta was the editor of science based Magazine Jukti and he regularly contributed to Mukto-Mona Blog whose founder Avijit Roy was slain in February 26.
Ananta also received Mukto-Mona Rationalist Award in 2006. He wrote several books including Parthib, 2001 (co-authored with Saikat Chowdhury), Darwin: Ekhush Shatake Prasongikota Ebong Bhabna, Soviet Union-E Bigyan O Biplob: Lisenko Odday etc.
Evolution was one of the central themes of many of his articles. In his blogs, he was also critical on the fundamentalists' politics.
In his recent Facebook status, Ananta criticised the role of police during the murders of Avijit and Oyasiqur and also during the sexual assault on women who joined the Bangla New Year celebrations by a group of miscreants at Dhaka University’s TSC and Suhrawardy Uddyan gate areas on April 14.
In a status early this morning he also talked about the misuse of power by an MP who wishes to beat an university teacher with a whip.
American citizen Avijit was brutally murdered by fanatics on February 26, during a trip to Bangladesh with his wife. Both Avijit and Bonna are naturalised US citizens, and were here because two of Avijit’s books were published in this year’s book fair.
Ahmed Rajeeb Haider, a blogger, an architect, and an activist of the Shahbagh Gonojagoron Mancha movement, was hacked to death in the capital’s Pallabi on February 15, 2013.
Secular blogger Md Oyasiqur Rahman Babu was hacked to death on March 30 this year, in Tejgaon, Dhaka allegedly for his atheist views.
On November 15 last year, unidentified assailants hacked Prof Shafiul to death with machetes in broad daylight near his Choddopai residence close to the Rajshahi University campus.