Dhaka: Somoy Prokashan owner Farid Ahmed received death threat through a mobile phone text message at 9:48am on Sunday.

The message from an Al-Ahrar UK in Bangla, was written in Roman alphabets, reads, ‘You have published so many books written by atheists. Now get ready for death.’

Farid Ahmed said, ‘I have informed the death threat to a police officer and will file a general diary later.’  

The owner of Jagriti Prokashony, a publication house, Faisal Arefin Dipan was hacked to death by miscreants at Shahbagh’s Aziz Supermarket in Dhaka, hours after Shuddhwashawr publication owner Ahmed Rashid Tutul, along with two other bloggers — Tareque Rahim and Ranadipam Basu — were stabbed in the capital’s Lalamatia on Saturday.

Both Dipan and Tutul were reportedly publishers of slain blogger-writer Avijit Roy who was killed and his wife Rafida Afrin Banya injured seriously as unidentified criminals stabbed them near TSC on the Dhaka University campus on 26 February 2015.

Avijit and Rafida, an expatriate couple living in the USA, returned home a few days ahead of the horrific incident as his two books were published on the occasion of Amar Ekushey Book Fair this year.

Criminals have targeted secularist writers in Bangladesh in recent years, as the government has cracked down on Islamist groups seeking to turn the South Asian nation of 160 million people into a sharia-based state.

Four secular bloggers have been hacked to death this year for writing critically about Islamist militancy.

At least 15 members of an al Qaeda inspired group Ansarullah Bangla Team, including a British citizen, have been arrested since August, after blogger Niloy Chatterjee was killed by a group of attackers armed with machetes.

The country has also been rocked by attacks in which two foreigners were shot dead and a Shi'ite shrine in Dhaka was bombed.