Two Arrested in Bangladesh for Deaths of Christian Workers
Two suspects have been arrested for the murder of two workers of a Christian charity in Bangladesh’s central Faridpur district
Corrections appended
Two suspects have been arrested for the murder of two workers of a Christian charity in Bangladesh’s central Faridpur district, according to local police.
"We've arrested two people, one from the same village where the two field workers lived in a rented house," said superintendent Abdul Jalil, according to Agence France Presse (AFP).
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According to police, 27-year-old Tapan Kumar Roy and 21-year-old Liplal Marandi of Christian Life Bangladesh were “hacked to death” by unidentified assailants on Thursday night at their home at Boalmari in Faridpur, 130 kilometers (81 miles) east of the capital.
Police said the attackers raided the rented house of the two workers and chopped them with sharp weapons leaving them critically injured.
Both were rushed to the local hospital, where doctors declared them dead.
Although Christian Life Bangladesh provides health services for people contaminated with arsenic from well water, those infected with HIV and provides nutrition education for mothers and children in a number of districts, local sources said the NGO workers – in addition to their usual activities – also used to show videos to the villagers on Christianity, according to the Bangladesh-based Financial Express news agency.
Roy and Marandi, who were the only members of the NGO in the area, previously worked in Bangladesh's Faridpur district where some people reportedly opposed their activities.
Jalil said investigators had not ruled out links to hard-line Islamic militant groups as there have been reports of sporadic violence against religious minorities in recent times by extremists from the majority Sunni community.
Correction: Friday, August 5, 2005:
An article on Monday, Aug. 1, 2005, about two Christians that were stabbed to death in Bangladesh on July 29, 2005 incorrectly reported the ages of the two victims - Tapan Kumar Roy, who was reported as being 30 years of age, and Liplal Marandi, who was reportedly 35. The Christian Post confirmed with Campus Crusade for Christ International on Friday that the ages had been misreported by local news agencies and that the two victims were actually 27 and 21, respectively.
