A court in Dhaka has transferred the trial of blogger Avijit Roy murder to Anti-Terrorism Tribunal for hearing.
Dhaka Metropolitan Magistrate Sarfuzzaman Ansari passed the order on Monday (Mar 25), concerned police station’s court register official Nizam Uddin told Bangla Tribune.
Inspector Mohammad Munirul Islam of Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC), investigation officer in the case, filed the charge-sheet before the court on Mar 13.
The five others charged with the killing are Akram Hossain alias Abir alias Adnan alias Hasibul alias Abdullah, Mozammel Hossain alias Saimon (organisational name Shahriar), Md Abu Siddique Sohel alias Sakib alias Sajid alias Shahab, Md Arafat Rahman (organisational name Siam alias Sazzad) and Shafiur Rahman alias Farabi.
Investigators said all of them except for Rabbi were involved with banned Islamist militant outfit Ansarullah Bangla Team.
Fugitives sacked major Zia and Akram are the masterminds of the killing while Farabi was charged for instigating the murder, investigators had said earlier, adding that Md Mukul Rana alias Shafiqul Islam alias Hadi, who was involved in the killing, died in a shootout with Detective Branch (DB).
Bangladeshi American writer, Avijit Roy, who founded the blog ‘Muktomona’ (free thinkers) and his wife Bonya were attacked on the night of Feb 26, 2015, on the Dhaka University Campus.
Machete-wielding men attacked the couple as they were coming out from the Ekushey Book Fair.
Avijit suffered a deep gash on his head and died while Bonya survived but lost a finger in the assault.
Islamist zealots had been threatening Avijit, a bioengineer and a naturalised US citizen, for his active campaign against Islamist radicals, for quite some time.
His father Ajay Roy, a well-known physicist who has taught at the Dhaka University for a long time, started a case over the incident.
Since the killing of Avijit, several others, including online activists, writers, publishers, members from the minority communities have been attacked or killed in a similar fashion by machete-wielding attackers, targeting the head to ensure immediate death.
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