Secular blogger Niladri Chatterjee, also known as Niloy Neel, has been hacked to death by unidentified assailants at his Goran residence in Dhaka.
Assistant Commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police Md Nure Alam told the Dhaka Tribune that police recovered the body on Friday afternoon.
"We heard that the victim was a blogger but the identity is not confirmed yet," said the police officer.
Read More: Another Mukto-Mona blogger hacked to death
Former Dhaka University student Niloy, 28, was known as Niloy Neel on Facebook.
On his Facebook account and a blogging platform named Ishtishon, Niloy used to write against militant activities, war criminals and Jamaat-e-Islami, on women and children rights, and other social issues.
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He was also a member of Bangladesh Rationalists' Soicety.
Niloy was also vocal demanding justcie for the recent blogger murders.
Ansar Al Islam, also known as al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), claimed responsibility for the murder in an email to the media in the evening.
Niloy's wife Ashamoni said one of the assistants, aged around 22, wearing a T-shirt and jeans first entered the flat saying that he would rent it and that the house-owner had asked him to see the condition.
She found it suspicious since the stranger was trying something with his mobile phone. At this, she asked Niloy to ask the person to leave the flat. Niloy then told the stranger to talk to the landlord.
But three others entered the flat all of a sudden and one of them forcefully held Ashamoni and her sister in the veranda on gunpoint.
Ashamoni said: “Then a bearded man aged around 30-35 began chopping Niloy indiscriminately in the bedroom chanting 'Naraye Takbir, Allahu Akbar.' Two of his accomplices also hacked Niloy at that time. The killers left the scene chanting the same within five minutes.
“I screamed from the veranda for help, but no one came forward to stop the killers.”
While leaving the building, the killers washed their machetes with a piece of cloth on the ground floor, and then put those in the two bags they were carrying, a neighbour told the Dhaka Tribune.
Morgue sources said that Niloy died on the spot and that there were at least 20 marks of injuries on the body.
Ashamoni was enraged seeing many people at the flat after the killing. She demanded arrest of the killers. “When will the government take strict measures to try the blogger killers?”
House-owner Shamsul Haque said that he had not known Niloy's real name. “Niloy rented the flat identifying himself as Niloy Chowdhury. He said he was a Muslim.”
Police recovered the body in the afternoon, and sent it to Dhaka Medical College Hospital for a post-mortem examination.
The incident took place two months after Mukto-Mona blogger Ananta Bijoy Das was murdered by masked assailants in Sylhet.
Take a look: Blogger-writer Avijit hacked to death
Another blogger, Oyasiqur Rahman Babu, was hacked to death in the capital only a month after secular blogger and former Buet teacher Avijit Roy was killed by extremists during the Ekushey Book Fair in February.
Banned militant group Ansarullah Bangla Team earlier claimed responsibility for the murder of Avijit, Oyasiqur and Bijoy.
In a Facebook post in May, Niloy said he had been followed by two persons on his way back home and that the police also denied to register a general diary.
On August 3, Niloy said he had been mentioned on the list of "anti-Isalm" persons made by Hizb ut-Tahrir leader Shafiur Rahman Farabi.
Farabi is now in jail. He was arrested shortly after the killing of Mukto-Mona blog founder Avijit for openly threatening the US citizen with death several times on Facebook.
