[CNN] Ananta Bijoy Das was killed Tuesday morning as he left his home for his job at a bank in the northeastern Bangladeshi city of Sylhet.
Sylhet Metropolitan Police Commissioner Kamrul Ahsan said four masked men attacked him, and hacked him to death with cleavers. The men then fled. Because of the early hour when the attack happened, there were few witnesses.
Imran Sarker, who heads the Blogger and Online Activists Network in Bangladesh, said, "It's one after another after another. It's the same scenario again and again. It's very troubling."
Das' death was at least the third one this year of someone who was killed for online criticism of Islam. In every case, the attacks were carried out publicly on city streets.
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Das was an atheist who contributed to Mukto Mona, the blog that Roy founded. Mukto Mona contains sections titled "Science" and "Rationalism," but most of the articles hold science up to religion as a litmus test, which it fails.
While critical of fundamentalism and attacks on secular thought, he was mostly concerned with championing science, according to a fellow blogger.
He was the editor of a local science magazine, Jukti (meaning, Reason) and wrote several books, including one work on Darwin. Sarker said, "He was a voice of social resistance; he was an activist. And now, he too has been silenced." |