‘Police watched while Avijit was getting killed,’ says Bonya

The policemen on Dhaka University campus did not stir to save blogger-writer Avijit Roy but simply watched on while he was being killed, his widow Rafida Ahmed Bonya has said.

‘I remember their faces’

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“While Avijit and I were being ruthlessly attacked, the local police stood close by but did not act,” Bonya, who survived the attack on Feb 26, has said in her statement posted on Facebook on Wednesday.  

“Now, we demand that the Bangladeshi government do everything in its power to bring the murderers to justice.”

The couple, who had arrived in Dhaka from the US a few days earlier, were returning from the Amar Ekushey Book Fair while they were attacked near the TSC by machete-wielding assailants.

Few hours later, Avijit died at the Dhaka Medical College and Hospital due to the deep gashes on his head. Bonya suffered severe head wounds and one of her thumbs had been sliced off.  

Roy, a bio-engineer, had angered fundamentalists and received repeated death threats for writing against religious fanaticism.

Bonya, a US citizen, said she gave her first formal statement to the BBC and the US-based organisation, Center for Inquiry.

She is now in US after the state department arranged her return.

She had earlier told her father-in-law, renowned Professor Ajay Roy, that she remembers the attackers’ faces and will able to identify them.

According to Bonya, there were at least five of them, all around 25 years of age. “They were in jeans and T-shirts. None had beards,” the professor told bdnews24.com. 

Rafida Ahmed Bonya (File Photo)

Avijit never believed that an attack so heinous could take place at the Dhaka University, reputed to be a space for progressive movements and the place where he grew up, Bonya wrote.

The Detective Branch has been investigating the murder with assistance from the FBI.

On Mar 3, the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) arrested ‘fundamentalist blogger’ Farabi Shafiur Rahman, as prime suspect.

Detectives said they have been trying to find out if the attack was carried out by his followers or Farabi himself.

He was earlier arrested for inciting attacks on bloggers on social media after blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider was hacked to death in 2013.

But he was released after securing bail from the High Court.

Bonya said she believed catching only the killers was not adequate.

“I urge the government to address terrorism and stop a legal culture of impunity, where writers can be killed without the killers being brought to trial.”

“My husband, Avijit Roy, wrote about science and rationalism and critiqued religious fundamentalism. Because of this, he was murdered.”