Muslims make up 90% of the population of Bangladesh; Hindus comprise 8.5%, Buddhists 0.6%, and Christians only 0.4%.
For more ChristianPersecution.com coverage of the persecution of Christians in Bangladesh, see here.
“A 91-year-old Christian villager drugged and killed in Barisal,” by Sumon Corraya, Asia News, February 2, 2022:
Barisal (AsiaNews) – Malkam D’Costa, 91, died last week at his home in Padrishibpur, a village in Barisal (south-central Bangladesh). He was the eldest member of the local Catholic community.
His lifeless body was found in the morning, killed by drugs, which were also given to five members of his family who ended up in hospital.
No one is able to say what happened. But the incident has outraged and sparked fear among local Christians who have reason to believe that it was not just a robbery gone wrong, but a deliberate attack against a Christian family.
In fact, in 2021, a neighbour of Malkam D ‘Costa was also forced to take a sleeping pill and then raped while she was alone at home. Her husband is employed as a nightwatchman at a Catholic school.
Once she regained consciousness, she filed a complaint against a Muslim man, Mohammad Alam, and Malkam D ’Costa’s son testified in her favour despite the fact that the accused’s family put pressure on him to get the charges dropped.
For this reason, the Christians in Padrishibpur believe that the killing was an act of revenge connected to the rape case.
Yesterday a hundred Christians held a protest in the village. Voicing their anger, they shouted: “We want justice” and “Brother Malkam is in the grave, why are his killers still out?”
One of the demonstrators, Andrio D’Costa, spoke to AsiaNews. “We Christians are citizens of this country, but they persecute us because we are a minority,” he said. “We want to live peacefully and see the perpetrators of this murder punished.”…
