The Bangladeshi authorities on Sunday arrested two individuals, Shankar Debnath and Anik Bhowmik, over charges of hurting religious sentiments of people after an Islamist mob ran riot. The mob went burning and vandalising houses of Hindus in Comilla district after a man reportedly shared a Facebook post on the controversy surrounding the publication of a cartoon of Prophet Mohammed in French satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo.
A case has been filed against the arrested men under the Digital Security Act. Later, a Bangladeshi court denied them bail and sent them to jail pending trial after police produced them before the court on Sunday afternoon.
Twitter user Joy Chakraborty has claimed that the police has taken no action against the arsonists and the vandals but instead jailed two Hindus over comments on Facebook. He emphasised that the carnage lasted for a whopping 5 hours.
However, police claimed that efforts are also underway to nab the attackers who indulged in vandalism and attacked Hindu households for the allegedly derogatory post to Prophet Muhammad. The police are also going to watch the videos of the violence to identify the attackers, a police official said.
In order to maintain peace and tranquility in the region, four platoons of police have been deployed in Kurbanpur and Andikot villages.
Hindu households in Bangladesh’s Comilla district attacked
In a shocking display of intolerance and bigotry, a group of radical Islamists attacked over 10 Hindu families on Sunday at Korbanpur village under Muradnagar Upazila in the Comilla district of Bangladesh. In a video that has now gone viral on social media, a violent Islamist mob, wearing skull caps and brandishing sticks, logs and stones, could be seen vandalising the houses of Hindu families.
Hindu households were selectively vandalised and later set on fire after Debnath expressed solidarity with France and defended the Charlie Hebdo cartoons in Facebook comments. The Islamist mob burnt down the office of the local Union Parishad Chairman Bankumar Shiv, his house, Shankar’s house and that of other Hindu families in the area.
