2 bauls assaulted in Chuadanga
Unidentified criminals assaulted two bauls and set fire to their Akhra at a remote village in Chuadanga yesterday, less than two weeks after four bauls had been attacked and injured in the district.
The incident took place when three bauls -- Julmat Shah, 55, his wife Momena Begum, 46, and their mentor Rinupada Halder, 63, -- were meditating at the akhra in Gobindapur village of Damurhuda upazila.
Some 20 to 25 men stormed the akhra around 1:00am, said Julmat, a senior baul who leads the sect. The criminals pressed him against the wall and blindfolded him.
They tied up Rinupada and Momena to separate trees and set the tin-roofed akhra ablaze.
The bauls repeatedly pleaded with them not to burn the akhra as it is a sacred place, but they didn't pay any heed.
“The youths cut Rinupada's and my hair with a sharp knife,” Julmat said.
The attackers stayed there for about one and a half hours but no one came to rescue the bauls, said Julmat, adding that the fire also burnt two adjacent houses.
Julmat's grandson eight-year-old Rakib, who was with him at the time of the attack, was unharmed.
The baul, a follower of Fakir Lalon, said he built the akhra in 2010 on his own piece of land. About a hundred bauls visit the place and hold Sadhu Sanga regularly.
Abu Jihad Fakhrul Alam, officer-in-charge of Damurhuda Police Station, confirmed the incident.
Earlier on July 17, unidentified assailants attacked a baul akhra at Ektarpur in Jibannagar upazila of the district, leaving four bauls, including two women, injured. The akhra was vandalised.
Mukul Hossain, who leads a community of about hundred bauls and established the akhra, said back then that six of their bauls had been beaten up by a group of people in 2014.
Unidentified criminals killed a baul fair organiser in the same district in December last year and attacked an akhra in Meherpur in August 2014.
The baul community in the region has been alleging that police inaction encouraged assailants to carry out attacks one after another.
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