Another blogger killed!

Where will this take us?

ANOTHER blogger has been killed in the capital in broad daylight on Friday. The casualness and impunity with which the killers entered the house of the victim and walked away after killing Niladri Chattopadhyay is both

astonishing and frightening. The killers and the killing must be condemned in the strongest

possible terms.

Niladri is the fifth blogger that the religious extremists have killed and what is exasperating is that the agencies have not been able to arrest any of the perpetrators. The pattern of the killings is

familiar and this time the responsibility for the

murder has been claimed by the South Asian branch of Al Qaeda, Ansar-Al-Islam.

What is regrettable in the whole affair of the blogger killings is that not only have the law enforcing agencies failed to make any headway into the five murders since 2013, they have failed even to provide the minimum security to the victims. We fail to understand the response of the police when Niladri sought their help. We find it abominably brazen for anyone belonging to the law enforcing agencies to advise a threatened person to leave the country for his safety. The situation brooks no soft pedalling. The

agencies must devote all energy to uncover the killers and offer the listed bloggers who have been threatened with all necessary protection.

For those who think they are acting for the greater glory of Islam, we say, Islam never believes killing is the arbiter of differences. Differences with critics should be combated intellectually and not by shedding blood. This is the teaching of Islam, which, regrettably, the perpetrators seem to have forgotten.