2 more ISKCON devotees "missing" After the arrest of Hindu priest in Bangladesh

A day after second Hindu monk Shyam Das Prabhu was arrested in Bangladesh, two other disciples of arrested spiritual leader Chinmoy Krishna Das have also gone missing in Chattogram, International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) Kolkata spokesperson Radharaman Das said on Saturday. claimed.

Radharaman Das posted a picture of four Hindu priests and wrote, “Do they look like terrorists? All of them have been arrested by Bangladeshi police without any reason.”

He also retweeted a post which claimed, “After Chinmoy Krishna Das, two more Hindu saints Ranganath Shyamsundar Das Brahmachari and Rudrapati Keshav Das Brahmachari were arrested by Bangladesh Police from Pundarik Dham.”

Although there is no official comment on the arrest or detention of Shyam Das Prabhu and two other ISKCON devotees – who had reportedly gone to give food to Chinmoy Krishna Das – sources said they were detained without warrant by the authorities.

ISKCON Bangladesh stopped some priests heading to India amid reports of at least four Hindu priests being detained, sources said.

Attacks on minorities in Bangladesh

Meanwhile, there are continuous reports of attacks on Hindus from Bangladesh. Earlier today, Munni Saha, a journalist, was taken into custody after he was targeted by radical Islamic forces and surrounded by a mob. Saha was attacked and threatened by a group of radicals at Caravan Bazaar in the center of Dhaka while leaving his office on Saturday evening. Sources said he was later released.

Journalists in the South Asian country have also complained of facing hundreds of accreditations being revoked amid radical targeting of the minority community in Bangladesh.

The Bangladesh government is also targeting ISKCON, with authorities reportedly ordering that the bank accounts of 17 people associated with the organization be frozen for 30 days, including its former member Chinmay Krishna Das, who was Weeks has been arrested on charges of treason.

An angry mob also vandalized an ISKCON center in Bhairav ​​area of ​​Bangladesh. ISKCON has more than 100 centers in Bangladesh, where Hindus constitute about 8 percent of the total population of 170 million.

Earlier, three Hindu temples were vandalized by a slogan-shouting mob on Friday in Chattogram, which has seen protests and violence after the case was registered against former ISKCON member Chinmoy Krishna Das.

There were also reports of mobs attacking members of the minority community. Sayan Ghosh, a resident of Kolkata, alleges that during his recent visit to Bangladesh, fundamentalist elements brutally assaulted him. Mr Ghosh said he was targeted after confirming that he was a Hindu from India. On Saturday night he returned home via Gede-Darshan border.

India worried

India has conveyed its “serious concern” to Bangladesh over “increasing incidents of violence” against the minority Hindu community in the neighboring country. New Delhi has also shared its concerns with Dhaka over the “surge in extremist rhetoric”.

India is in touch with the interim government on a regular and frequent basis regarding the increasing cases of communal incidents targeting Hindu minorities in Bangladesh, the Ministry of External Affairs told reporters at its weekly press briefing.

There is also a political consensus and support among parties in India for appropriate action to be taken by the Central Government on this matter.

Speaking on the issue, Trinamool Congress national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee said, “The pictures emerging from Bangladesh are infuriating and bloodthirsty. I have made my stand clear that you have to follow the Constitution of the country and the state That has no role in this.” It is for the Central Government to take up this with the Government of Bangladesh in the strongest possible manner or in the language they understand.”