Police stand guard near the burial site of Japanese national, Hoshi Kunio, in Rangpur, some 306kms north of capital Dhaka yesterday, 10 days after unidentified assailants gunned him down in a village near the northern town.

AFP
Dhaka
A Japanese farmer shot dead by suspected Islamist militants in Bangladesh was buried in a Muslim graveyard yesterday after a cleric testified that he had converted to Islam, officials said.
Hoshi Kunio was shot dead by three men on a motorbike who stopped his rickshaw on a dirt road last week, an attack later claimed by the Islamic State group.
The 66-year-old had settled in Bangladesh, where he had leased land to farm, and was living in the northern city of Rangpur.
His murder came just five days after an Italian aid worker, Cesare Tavella, was shot dead in similar fashion in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, an attack also claimed by the jihadist group IS.
Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal said, “The Japanese government doesn’t have any objection to the burial of Kunio Hoshi in Bangladesh. Accordingly, the ministry has instructed the Rangpur administration to take necessary steps for his burial.”
“He was buried in the city’s Munshipara graveyard early Tuesday morning,” Rangpur city police chief Abdur Razzaq said.
Priyasindhu Talukdar, a government official in Rangpur, said Kunio was buried in a Muslim graveyard, adding, “We got confirmation that he had converted to Islam before his death.”
“We held his funeral prayer and then buried him in the graveyard in accordance with Muslim rites. The Japanese embassy in Bangladesh approved the burial and two Japanese officials were present,” Talukdar said.
Japanese embassy spokesman Takeshi Matsunaga confirmed Kunio had been buried in
Bangladesh.
The Bangladesh government has formed a high-level, five-member investigation team to find out more about the murder, which occurred just days after the killing of an Italian man in Dhaka.
Bangladesh prides itself on being a mainly moderate Muslim country. But the gruesome killings of a series of atheist bloggers this year have rocked the nation and sparked a crackdown on local hardline Islamist groups.  
Experts say Islamist militants pose a growing danger in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, warning that a long-running political crisis has radicalised opponents of the government.
However, experts have expressed scepticism about the IS claim of responsibility in the murders of Kunio and Tavella.