Four days after Hindu temples and houses were attacked in Bangladesh’s Brahmanbaria district, extremists targeted the minority community again on Friday.
Police said several houses were set on fire at Madhyaparha and Dakhshinparha in the Upazila town at dawn on Friday. “The attackers fled after torching seven houses. Locals put out the flames,” said Additional Superintendent of Police (SP) Muhammed Iqbal Hossain.
No one was injured in the incident.
The latest attack has escalated tension in the trouble-hit Upazila.
On October 30, over a 100 people were injured when a mob of around 3,000 local Muslims demolished at least 10 temples and vandalised hundreds of houses of the Hindu community in the area. The two-hour mayhem followed a Facebook post from the account of a local Hindu youth, which the attackers said did “hurt the religious sentiment” of the Muslims.
The youth, Rasraj Das, a fisherman, had already apologised to Muslims saying his account had been hacked.
Mr. Das, a supporter of the ruling Awami League party, was caught, beaten up and handed over to the police by the radicals, who had called two protest rallies on Sunday over the Facebook post.
The rallies were allegedly organised by the local leaders of radical Islamist groups Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat and Hefazat-e-Islam.
Meanwhile, a team of the National Human Rights Commission, which visited the affected area, has said the attack was deliberate and aimed at grabbing land from the minority community.
