A Pir, or Sufi spiritual leader, and his daughter were murdered in Dinajpur’s Bochaganj upazila Monday night.
Pir Farhad Hossain Chowdhury and Rupali Begum were found dead at his Khanqah Sharif in Hatrampur area, close to his Doulagram village home.
Both of them had bullet marks on their bodies and the young woman’s neck was slit with a sharp weapon.
Farhad was the former president of BNP’s Setabganj municipality unit. Rupali was his adopted daughter.
Bochaganj police OC Habibul Haque confirmed the incident to the Dhaka Tribune.
Followers and locals gather in front of the Khanqah Sharif of Pir Farhad Hossain Chowdhury known as Kaderia Mohammadia Darbar Sharif DHAKA TRIBUNE
Police said quoting locals that there had been a power cut at the time the murders took place.
The OC said that there had been no immediate clues to the means and motives of the murder. They suspect that it could be an Islamist extremist attack or result of a political or personal conflict.
“We are carrying out an inquest examination and then the bodies will be sent to the morgue for autopsy,” the official said.
In the last couple of years, Islamist militants have killed over a dozen Pirs and their disciples, and launched bomb attacks on shrines across the country. The old faction of banned militant outfit JMB claimed responsibilities for most of those attacks. Two other groups – HujiB and New JMB – were also found involved in several other attacks on shrines and non-Sunni preachers.