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New Delhi: In a shocking incident that has come to light from Bangladesh, a caretaker of a temple was found dead in a hilly area in Sadar Upazila. The temple caretaker had been missing for three days, according to a Daily Sun report, which cited police sources.

The victim has been identified as Nayan Das. He was 35 years old and hailed from Satkania. The caretaker worked at the Pulishshora Ghona Naag Panchami Temple in Khurushkhul Union.

This is the first reported killing of a Hindu in Bangladesh since the general elections took place earlier this year. Several such killings had been reported since the unseating of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

How his body was spotted

As per police and local sources, a group of unidentified people reportedly called the temple caretaker out of his residence in the Khurushkul area around 9 pm on Sunday. Soon after, he went missing. On Monday night, family members filed a general diary (internal police record of daily station events) with Cox’s Bazar Sadar Model Police Station as he failed to locate him anywhere.

Locals and colleagues of Nayan started searching for him in the nearby places the next day. On Wednesday afternoon, around 30 to 35 people who were in a group discovered his body hanging from a tree in a remote hilly area east of the temple. They immediately informed the police.

The body had a scarf wrapped around the neck. The police took the body in its possession and sent it to Cox’s Bazar General Hospital morgue for a post-mortem examination.

What did the police say

Officer-in-Charge Mohammad Samiuddin of Cox’s Bazar Sadar Model Police Station said the postmortem examination will help ascertain the cause of the death, whether it was a murder or a suicide. He pointed out that the police are trying to uncover the mystery behind the death and how it happened.

As the investigation is underway, a temple associate claimed that Nayan might have been murdered and later his body hanged from the tree. He claimed there were injury marks to his neck.

Jony Dhar, general secretary of the Cox’s Bazar Puja Udjapan Parishad, pointed out that the family said that the temple caretaker had left home on April 19 after being called out by unidentified persons and never returned to the temple after that.