Unidentified miscreants killed an elderly Buddhist monk by slitting his throat in Naikkhangchhari upazila of Bandarban early today.
Body of the victim – Mong Shwe U Chak, 75, – was found near Baishari Bihar at Uppar Chak Para village in the upazila, our Bandarban correspondent reports quoting Abul Khair, officer-in-charge (OC) of Naikkhangchhari Police Station.
The victim’s daughter-in-law found the body when she went to the bihar with some food for the monk around 5:00am.
No valuables were missing from the bihar where he had been staying alone for the last two years, he added.
Aung Sa Dhoai Chak, son of the victim, told the correspondent that his father did not have any enmity with anyone in the area.
Panic spread among the locals due to the first attack of its kind in the area. Members of police and Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) were deployed there, the correspondent said.
A top Bangladeshi human rights lawyer who is close to the country’s Buddhist community told AFP that U Chak had received anonymous death threats.
“He became a monk just one and a half years ago. He had received death threats, but nobody took it seriously,” AFP reports quoting the lawyer, Jyotirmoy Barua.
Police said they did not know the motive of the killing and no one had been arrested.
The Muslim-majority nation of 160 million people has seen a surge in violent attacks over the past few months in which liberal activists, members of minority Muslim sects and other religious groups have been targeted by Islamist extremists.
Islamic State has claimed responsibility for some of the killings although the government denies the Sunni militant group has a presence in the country, saying homegrown extremists are behind the attacks.
