A court in Dhaka has acquitted Shafiur Rahman Farabi, charged with the murder of Avijit Roy, in a case filed under the ICT Act on charges of issuing repeated death threats to writer-blogger before his death.
On Wednesday (Apr 10), the Cyber Tribunal cleared him saying that the prosecution has failed to prove the charges levelled on him beyond doubt.
Farabi, however, still will be tried with five others in the case over the 2015 killing on the Dhaka University campus.

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In March 2015, the Rapid Action Battalion arrested him from Dhaka’s Jatrabari Bus Terminal area for issuing threats to several personalities for their writings.

Later, the detective branch started a case under the ICT Act with Ramna Police Station against the 29-year-old.
In November the same year, charges were levelled against him and the trial began in April 2016 after the court indicted him.
Earlier, in 2010, he was detained for vandalism on Chittagong University campus in 2010.
He was arrested once again in 2013 for issuing death threat to the imam who conducted namaz-e-janaza of Rajib Haider, a blogger hacked to death in Mirpur on Feb 15 the same year.
He was out on bail six months later and started to incite killing of free-thinking bloggers.
Farabi came to the spotlight again after killing of Avijit Roy.
Bangladeshi American writer, Avijit, who founded the blog ‘Muktomona’ (free thinkers) and his wife Rafida Ahmed Bonya were attacked on the night of Feb 26, 2015, on the Dhaka University Campus.
Machete-wielding men attacked the couple as they came 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.