An attendant of a Hindu monastery was hacked to death by unknown assailants at Madhupur in Jhenaidah sadar on early Friday apparently in a sequel of recent killings.

The fresh victim Shamananda Das, 62, was the attendant of Radhamadan Monastery. He had been serving there for 40 years.

Deputy police chief of the district Gopinath Kanjilal said Shamananda, also known as Babaji, was ‘a priest’ in the temple. But Jhenaidah Sadar Police Officer-in-charge Hasan Hafizur Rahman told AFP the man was ‘a temple volunteer who helps conduct prayers’.

‘He was an itinerant temple volunteer who travels from one temple to another to serve the Hindu devotees. He came to this temple only yesterday,’ he said.

He also said that the victim was plucking flowers at the monastery gate at about 5:00am when three people riding a motorbike arrived and swooped on him.

They hacked his nape of neck and head indiscriminately, leaving him dead on the spot.

‘He was preparing morning prayers with flowers at the temple early in the morning and that time three young people came by a motor bike and killed him with machetes and fled away,’ said Mahbubur Rahman, the chief of Jhenaidah district administration.

‘The nature of killing was similar with the local militants, but we can not say more at the moment,’ Mahbubur told Reuters.

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for some of the recent killings although the government denies the Sunni militant group has a presence in the country, saying homegrown extremists are behind the attacks.

Last month a Hindu priest, 70-year-old Ananda Gopal Ganguly, was also hacked to death in a rice paddy field in the same district near his home.

Deputy police chief Kanjilal said a student activist from the country’s largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, has been arrested over the attack and he had allegedly admitted his role in the killing.

Bangladesh is reeling from a wave of murders of secular and liberal activists and religious minorities that have left some 50 people dead in the last three years.

Victims of the attacks by suspected Islamists have included secular bloggers, gay rights activists and followers of minority religions including Hindus, Christians and Muslim sufis and Shiites.

Since April more than a dozen people were hacked to death amid a sharp spike in the targeted killings.

Most of the recent attacks have been claimed by the Islamic State organisation or the local offshoot of Al-Qaeda.