Blogger Avijit killed in miscreants` attack

DU Correspondent: Avijit Roy, a free-thinking blogger, was hacked to death by unidentified miscreants on the Dhaka University campus on Thursday night.

His wife Rafida Ahmed was grievously injured in the attack. Her left hand fingers were severed in the knife attack.

 

The miscreants stabbed the couple repeatedly before a dumbstruck crowd near the Teacher-Student Centre on the Dhaka University campus at around 9:15pm as they were on their way home after visiting the Amar Ekushey Book Fair on the Bangla Academy premises, the police and locals said.

The couple were immediately taken to Dhaka Medical College Hospital.

Avijit Roy suffered fatal wounds in the head and died from bleeding around 10:25pm.

Threats were issued several times earlier to Avijit, 43, founder of the Mukto Mona blog, that he would meet the fate of Humayun Azad, a DU teacher who was stabbed by miscreants on the night of February 27, 2004 in a similar attack in the same place. Humayun recovered but later died of a heart attack in Germany.

DU proctor Amzad Ali, after talking to the victim’s family, said Avijit had received death threats because of his activities on the blog. Avijits’s father Ajay Roy is a retired professor of physics at Dhaka University, he said.

DMCH police outpost inspector Mozammel Haque told newsmen that unidentified people on a CNG-run auto- rickshaw had come to the TSC area and attacked the couple.

Avijit authored more than nine books. Two of his books  were launched in the ongoing book fair.

Avijit, who lived in the United States, came to Bangladesh on February 16 to attend the book fair and was scheduled to leave the country on February 29.

After graduating from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Avijit went to the United States and was teaching at a university there.

As the news of his death spread, protests broke out on the Dhaka University campus with numerous small processions demanding immediate arrest of the killers.

risingbd/DHAKA/Feb 27, 2015/Jisan/Mukul