Two Hindu men were killed in separate incidents in Bangladesh’s Moulvibazar and Mymensingh districts ahead of the elections on Thursday.
The International Crisis Group has warned of a "real danger" of further attacks on candidates, as well as reprisals against Awami League supporters or Bangladesh's Hindu minority.
The election is Bangladesh’s first since former PM Sheikh Hasina’s government collapsed in 2024 after weeks of mass protests. Hasina fled the country and her party is banned from the polls
In Moulvibazar, a 28-year-old tea worker, Ratan Shuvo Kar, was found dead with his hands and feet tied in a tea garden in Kamalganj upazila yesterday.
The deceased was a worker at Champara Tea Garden under Islampur union, said Kamalganj Police Station Officer-in-Charge Abdul Awal, as reported by Bangladeshi newspaper The Daily Star.
Locals spotted the body around 10 am and informed police. Residents said the body bore visible injury marks and was found bloodied. Some suspected that he may have been killed elsewhere and later dumped in the garden.
Ratan’s elder brother, Laxman Kar, said the family had been searching for him since the previous night. “This morning, we were informed that his body was lying in the garden. We went there and identified him. We do not know why he was killed,” he said.
Police sent the body to Moulvibazar Sadar Hospital for autopsy and said an investigation is underway.
In a separate incident in Mymensingh, a 62-year-old rice trader, Susen Chandra Sarkar, was brutally hacked to death inside his shop in Trishal upazila, reported TOI.
According to Trishal police station officer-in-charge Muhammad Firoz Hossain, the murder occurred around 11 pm on Monday at the Bogar Bazar intersection. Sarkar was rushed to Mymensingh Medical College Hospital, where doctors declared him dead.
Police said unidentified assailants attacked Sarkar with a sharp weapon, killing him before locking the shop from outside and fleeing the scene. Family members later found him lying in a pool of blood.
"After brutally killing my father, the miscreants looted several lakhs of taka from the shop," Sarkar's son, Sujan Sarkar, told the reporters.. He also said their family had been running the rice business for many years and had no known disputes or enmity with anyone.
Meanwhile, the interim government is providing financial and housing assistance to the family of Dipu Chandra Das (Dipu Das), who was beaten and burnt to death in Square Masterbari area of Bhaluka Upazila in Mymensingh district on December 18.
