Dhaka:
Prominent American writer of Bangladeshi origin Avijit Roy was attacked and killed by unidentified assailants Thursday and while his blogger wife was injured, media reports said.
Roy along with his wife Rafida Ahmed Banna were attacked at Dhaka University's TSC intersection around 9.30 p.m. while they were returning from the Amar Ekushey Book Fair.
The writer, who suffered a deep gash on his head, was taken to the Dhaka Medical College and Hospital (DMCH) for emergency surgery but died during it, the hospital's police outpost Inspector Mozzamel Haque told bdnews24.com.
Roy, an engineer who was working in the US, had been threatened before by Islamist fundamentalists and had just returned to his native country from the U.S. a week before his death.
Bangladesh News 24 reported that a man named Shafiur Rhaman Farabi had written a Facebook post that read, “Avijit Roy lives in American and so, it is not possible to kill him right now. He will be murdered when he comes back.”
His writings showed him to be a fierce critic of Islamic fundamentalism and was frequently threatened. In his description on Twitter, Roy called himself a “prominent defender of the free-thought movement” in Bangladesh.
He was also founder of Mukto-Mona (Free-mind) blog site which champions liberal secular writing in the Muslim-majority nation.
src:sify.com