DHAKA
Suspected Islamic militants have hacked to death a university professor in western Bangladesh, several years after he led a push to ban students wearing full-face veils, police said on Sunday.
Police have arrested at least 20 people for questioning over the murder near Rajshahi University in the west of the country where the victim was a professor of sociology, a senior officer said.
The victim, Shafiul Islam, followed the folk sect Baul, popular in parts of western Bangladesh, whose members call themselves followers of humanism rather than a particular religion.
The murder has triggered protests in the capital Dhaka and in Rajshahi where mainly students have marched through university campuses and boycotted classes since news of the killing broke on Saturday.
“We are working on several possible motives behind the killing,” Rajshahi police commissioner Mahbubur Rahman said, adding that the “leading” one was that the murder was carried out by Islamist militants.
He said some 20 people have been arrested but declined to say which religious or political groups they were connected to.
A previously unknown Islamist group calling itself the Ansar al Islam Bangladesh-2 claimed responsibility for the killing, after opening a Facebook page late on Saturday.
“Our Mujahideens have today murdered an apostate who had prohibited female students from wearing veils in his department and the classrooms,” a posting said.
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