Dae'sh or Islamic State group have claimed that their members had killed a top Shia preacher in Jhenaidah on Monday night – a claim the authorities reject.
The latest victim, mentioned by Dae'sh as Abdul Razzaq, 45, was a homoeopathic medicine practitioner at Kaliganj of the district.
"Unidentified attackers hacked Abdur Razzaq to death with sharp weapons on Monday night after he shut down his shop and was heading back to his village," OC Anwar Hossain told AFP. "We're investigating the motive but it was not carried out by the IS."
On January 7, Chhamir Uddin Mandal, 85, was stabbed to death at his chamber at Belekhal Bazar of the sadar upazila. He had been practising homeopathy for the last 40 years. Dae'sh said that he was a preacher who had converted to Christianity from Islam. But his family and the police said that Chhamir had switched back to Islam two years ago.
According to US monitoring group SITE, Dae'sh said in a statement that its fighters in Bangladesh "were able to assassinate the polytheist apostate Hafidh Abdul Razzaq, one of the top preachers for the Rafidha [Shia] religion."
Police said that the victim was a Sunni Muslim. But Ibrahim Khalil Rizvi, who heads a Shia education centre in Khulna, told AFP that Razzaq had been following the Shia form of the religion "for over 20 years."
In the recent months, Dae'sh has claimed a series of killings targeting foreigners and minorities including Shia, Ahmadiyya and Sufi Muslims, Hindus and Christians, but the authorities deny that it has a presence there and instead blame local Islamist groups.
On the other hand, newly-formed group al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent earlier claimed responsibilities for the murder of several secularists.
The government has instead blamed political opponents and banned militant groups Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and Ansarullah Bangla Team for the upsurge in deadly violence.
