A young man belonging to Hindu community was arrested on Wednesday as he reportedly ‘hurt religious sentiments’ of Muslims in Kalamkanda upazila district of Bangladesh.

The arrested person was identified as Supriyo Saha Roy, 28, son of Sudhangshu Saha Roy of the upazila.

Md Majharul Karim, Officer-in-charge of Kalmakanda Police Station said that Supriyo has been sharing anti-Muslim posts on Facebook since April 18 which created agitation among the local Muslims.

He was arrested from his house on Tuesday night, OC said. A case was filed against Supriyo under Digital Security Act.

(This article was published on unb.com.bd on April 22, 2020.)

HinduPost Note

Fake allegations of offensive social media posts against Hindus are a tried and tested tactic used by Bangladeshi Islamists to launch attacks against the Hindu community. Here is a partial listing of few such incidents from recent times –

Oct 2019 – Hindu youth Biplop Chandra Baddya’s Facebook account was hacked by Muslim attackers, who then blackmailed the 25-year-old before posting blasphemous comments against Islam to frame Biplop. This then sparked violence against Hindus in Bhola region, destroying a temple and nine Hindu homes.

Nov 2017 – 30 Hindu houses were looted and torched in Rangpur district after rumours that a Hindu youth had published an offensive Facebook status.

Nov 2016 – 10 temples and hundreds of houses of the Hindu community were razed to the ground at Brahmanbaria‘s Nasirnagar upazila, as part of a conspiracy to grab Hindu land using a anti-Islam Facebook post uploaded from the hacked account of a poor Hindu fisherman Rasrasj Das.

May 2016 – a Hindu headmaster of a high school, Shyamal Kanti Bhakta, was made to  do sit-ups in public by a powerful MP and then sacked for “insulting Islam” and “unauthorised absence”. He was later reinstated after an inquiry found the allegations against him untrue.

Sept 2012 – Buddhists n Cox’s Bazar were attacked after allegations that a Buddhist youth insulted Islam on Facebook. Investigations later found the Facebook post was faked to justify the attack.“

Often, such manufactured or other trivial incidents are used as a pretext to rouse even ordinary citizens in the Muslim-majority nation to launch mob attacks on Hindus, grab their land and terrorize them.

From 22% in 1951 census (when Bangladesh was East Pakistan), Hindus today constitute merely 9% of the total population of Bangladesh. Dhaka University’s Prof. Abul Barkat research showed that from 1964 to 2013, around 11.3 million Hindus left Bangladesh due to religious persecution and discrimination; i.e. on an average 632 Hindus leave the country each day and 230,612 annually.

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