Islamists attack 14 Hindu temples in Bangladesh

A week after a bunch of minors vandalised the idol of Goddess Saraswati, 14 Hindu temples have come under attack again in Bangladesh.

Dhaka, Feb 06: In yet another instance of Hindu hate, 14 Hindu temples have been vandalised in Bangladesh on Sunday.

According to a report in Dhaka Tribune, idols of Hindu goddesses in 14 temples in Baliadangi upazila have come under attack.

"Unidentified people carried out the attacks under the cover of darkness, vandalising idols in 14 temples in three unions (lowest local government tier)," PTI quoted Bidyanath Barman, a Hindu community leader at Baliadangi) "upazila" or "sub-district" in Thakurgaon as saying. Vidyanath Burman, general secretary of the upazila puja celebration parishad, has claimed that the miscreants have broken the arms, legs, and heads of the idols and some idols were broken and thrown into the pond.

Upazila nirbahi officer Bipul Kumar told India Today that the authorities have spoken to the Hindu community and asked them not to "panic". "We talked with the local Hindu community and asked them not to panic.Additional security measures have been taken. The situation is under control now," he said.

This is for the first time that such incident has occurred in those temples. "We have been offering Puja in the temples for about fifty years. No untoward incidents took place during the years. We demand justice and immediate arrest of those involved in vandalism," Dhantala union Puja Ujjapon Committee general secretary Jotirmoy Singh told the channel.

Baliadangi police station Officer-in-charge (OC) Khairul Anam said, "We believe that these incidents took place between Saturday night to Sunday morning," reported Dhaka Tribune. Charul Union Parishad chairman Dilip Kumar Chatterjee said that they reached the spot in the morning upon hearing about the incident.

The Hindu community leader and union parishad chairman Samar Chattarjee said the region was always known to be an area of excellent interfaith harmony as "no such heinous incident took place here in the past".

"The (majority) Muslim community does not have any dispute with us (Hindus)... we just cannot understand who could be these culprits," he said. "It clearly appears to be a case of an orchestrated attack to disrupt the peaceful situation of the country," Thakurgaon's police chief Jahangir Hossain told reporters at one of the temple sites.

He added that a police investigation was launched immediately to track down the miscreants. "I assure you they will have to face stern legal actions," he said. "This (attack) is the manifestation of a conspiracy against peace and communal harmony...this is a serious crime and the perpetrators will face the music," Thakurgaon's deputy commissioner or administrative chief Mahbubur Rahman said.

This comes just a week after, bunch of minors vandalised () the idol of Goddess Saraswati in Bangladesh. The incident is reported from Naraich village in Mohanganj upazila in the Netrakona district in the Mymensingh Division on Thursday.

According to a report by Bangladesh National Hindu Grand Alliance, 154 religious minorities, including Hindus, were killed in Bangladesh in 2022 alone. The Bangladesh National Hindu Grand Alliance revealed that 39 women belonging to minority communities were raped (27 of them were gang-raped). About 14 of the victims were killed after committing rape and one lakh 95, 991 families have insecurity.

The annual report submitted by the alliance stated that 445 families have been forced to leave the country. 89,990 acres of land belonging to minority communities have been encroached upon. 572 families were evicted from the homestead, 3 thousand 694 families attempted to be evicted, 35, 800 families were threatened with eviction.