Mymensingh:  A muezzin, who proclaims the call to prayer, of a mosque of Ahmadiyya Muslim community was stabbed by miscreants inside the mosque in Ishwarganj upazila of Mymensingh on Monday night.

The victim is Mostafizur Rahman, a resident of Kaharole upazila of Dinajpur district.

District superintendent of police (SP) Syed Nurul Islam said a group of miscreants numbering three stormed into the mosque at Khanpur village around 8:30pm, some time before the Esher prayer and hacked Mostafizur indiscriminately with sharp weapons, leaving him injured.

SP said primarily it has been believed that the incident took place centring religious dissention. Another religious group think Ahmedis are not in the right track. They considered the Ahmedis as their rivals. The attack was planned by the anti-Ahmedis. Police has already started their investigation in this issue.

However, the muezzin was taken to Mymensingh Medical College Hospital in critical condition. Later he was shifted to Dhaka for better treatment.

However, the local people beat a man, named Abdul Ahad, suspecting him as one of the attackers and later, handed over him to police. Abdul Ahad is a resident of Kalmakanda upzila in Netrakona.

However, Abdul Ahad said two other men were also involved in the incident but he refused to mention their names. Ahad, who is now admitted at a local hospital, will be interrogated after getting well.

The Ishwarganj police Officer-in-charge Mohammad Badrul Alam Khan said Mustafizur entered into the mosque for delivering the Esher azaan, the call to prayer, when three young men attacked on him. They hacked him with sharp weapons and leaving him injured. Hearing the scream local people rushed in and caught the attackers and beat them. However, two of them managed to flee from the spot.

There are around 100,000 Ahmadis in Bangladesh, where they have faced attacks in the past and are often barred from setting up mosques.

Last year a suicide blast by a suspected Islamist extremist at an Ahmadi mosque in the northwestern town of Bagmara wounded three people.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack, but the authorities blamed the homegrown militant group Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), which is accused of killing scores of religious minorities including Hindus, Christians, Sufi Muslims and Shiites.

Since that attack police have stepped up security in Khanpur, which is home to around a dozen Ahmadi families.

The worst such attack was in October 1999, when a bomb ripped through an Ahmadi mosque in southern city of Khulna, killing at least eight worshippers.

Police later blamed the Harkatul Jihad Al Islami (HuJI) for the attack. HuJI leader Mufti Abdul Hannan and two his aides were last month executed by the authorities for a bomb attack on the British envoy in a northeastern city in 2004.