Ali, a correspondent for the Khulna-based, Bengali-language daily Anirban, died shortly before midnight on April 21, while undergoing treatment at Khulna Medical College Hospital for injuries sustained in an attack days earlier. Late on the night of April 17, masked men kidnapped Ali from his home in the village of Shovna, according to local press reports. The assailants stabbed him, beat him severely, and broke his hands and legs before abandoning him on the outskirts of his village, according to police.
Ali was found unconscious and taken to the hospital in Khulna, a major city in southwestern Bangladesh. Doctors said he died due to major brain damage and profuse bleeding.
Police suggested that members of the outlawed Biplobi Communist Party may have killed Ali because of a dispute over ownership of a shrimp farm. However, journalists in Khulna said that the investigation lacked credibility because Ali's reporting had uncovered links between police and smuggling rings in the region. CPJ sources said that Ali, who worked as the Dumuria subdistrict correspondent for Anirban, was killed because "he knew too much" about the workings of local criminal syndicates and the complicity of some local authorities in their activities.