Volunteer Hacked to Death at Hindu Ashram in Bangladesh

Via The New York Times:

A Hindu man was hacked to death in northern Bangladesh on Friday, the latest in a string of such killings in the country.

The victim, Nityaranjan Pandey, a volunteer at a Hindu ashram in the district of Pabna, was taking a walk early Friday morning when he was attacked by unknown assailants, said Abdullah Al Hassan, the officer in charge of the Pabna Sadar police station.

Mr. Pandey, about 60, had been a volunteer at the Sree Sree Thakur Anukulchandra Satsang ashram, Mr. Hassan said. He joined the ashram roughly 35 years ago and was a volunteer priest, said Tapas Kumar Roy, a priest at the ashram.

“We did not find any witness of this criminal incident, so we don’t have any more details,” Mr. Hassan said. “We found two deep wounds of hacking on the neck of Pandey.”

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, and Mr. Hassan said the police had no suspects.

As we have all learned by now, “No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack” is 21st century media code for: “Islamic whackos did this but we don’t want to be un-PC and state the obvious.”

While the media may be unwilling to blame the Islamic whackos, the Islamic whackos themselves aren’t:

Both the Islamic State and a branch of Al Qaeda have claimed responsibility for some of the attacks, according to statements attributed to them by the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist activity online. But the authorities in Bangladesh have denied the presence in the country of foreign militants, and the police have said they suspect Islamist militants operating inside Bangladesh were behind many of the attacks.

That’s probably intended to be comforting in some weird way, as if everyone can feel better that the terrorism is home grown, rather than being imported from one of the two Big Baddies. Mr. Pandey, however, is just as dead either way.

Ricochet editor-in-chief Jon Gabriel wasn’t afraid to offer his suspicions about the attackers in his always unique way: