Dhaka: Unidentified men on Sunday hacked to death a Christian businessman in Bangladesh, hours after religious extremists shot dead the wife of a top anti-terror police officer.
Sunil Gomes, 65, was found dead inside his grocery shop near a church at around midday in northwestern Notore district, Police Superintendent Shyamal Mukherjee told Press Trust of India over phone.
The assailants fled the scene immediately after hacking to death Gomes at the commercial hub at Banpara village at the outskirts of the district town.
“We are yet to know the details of the incident but our policemen are gathering information about the murder,” Mukherjee said.
The Muslim-majority nation has seen a string of brutal attacks on minorities and secular activists by Islamists in recent months.
In a separate incident, the wife of a police officer who carried out several raids against militants was stabbed and shot dead by three bike-borne assailants in front of her minor son in the port city of Chittagong.
Mahmuda Aktar, 33, was targeted by the gunmen at around 6:45 am (local time) while she was on her way to drop her six-year-old first-grader son to a nearby bus stop for school in Chittagong, about 275 km southeast of the national capital of Dhaka.
Bangladesh Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal said police suspect religious extremists were behind her murder. She was the wife of Superintendent of Police Babul Aktar, now posted at the police headquarters in Dhaka. Kamal, who was in the port city at the time of the murder, told reporters that the Islamists likely to have killed Babul’s wife as he played a key role in a major campaign against Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB).
Babul has led several raids on militant hideouts and investigated several terror-related cases as the Additional Deputy Commissioner with the Detective Branch in Chittagong.
Babul, who was promoted in April, played a key role in nabbing top militants and busting their hideouts in the southern coastal district. It was his investigations which led to the busting of a hideout of banned JMB and arrest of its military wing chief Mohamed Javed in October last year.
“Since Babul Aktar was in counter-terrorism, we suspect that militants are behind the murder of his wife,” Detective Branch Deputy Commissioner Moktar Ahmed said.
Quoting witnesses, Chittagong metro police’s Deputy Commissioner Paritosh Ghose said that the three bike-borne attackers ambushed Mahmuda in front of her minor son.
The boy said the attackers first took him away and then one of them stabbed his mother with a knife before shooting her.
Police said that Mahmuda was shot in the head, The Hindu reported.
She also has a four-year-old daughter.