Twelve threats from Farabi since 2012

Prof Ajoy Roy, father of slain writer Avijit Roy, had failed to elicit any positive response from police when he lodged a complaint a year ago about a dozen death threats issued to his son.

Shafiur Rahman Farabi, the now arrested prime suspect in Avijit's murder, issued all those threats in his Facebook page since 2012. In some of his posts, he said Avijit was targeted for “demeaning Islam”.

Avijit had forwarded the threats to his father through e-mail. His father visited Ramna Police Station last year to report the threats.

One of the threats read: “Avijit Roy cannot be killed now. He lives in America. But he will certainly be killed once he is back.”

Police, however, could not care less.

“We can't do anything about it even if you complain,” Prof Ajoy quoted a police officer as saying.

Prof Ajoy, globally known for his research on magnetic resonance, then consulted one of his lawyer friends at the High Court to see if he could get a court ruling in Avijit's favour for legal protection. But the lawyer also discouraged him.

“They [police and lawyer] said a mere death threat given online is unlikely to stand up in court,” Ajoy told The Daily Star. 

Contacted, Mashiur Rahman, officer-in-charge of Ramna Police Station, said, “Duty officers may sometimes discourage people under certain circumstances. In that case, the complainant should have seen me to get the work done.”

Dhaka Metropolitan Police (Ramna) Assistant Commissioner Shibly Noman said police usually record general diary on such complaints.

A general diary has to be investigated by police to see if it had any merit to be accepted as a case.

Avijit, a Georgia-based software engineer, was hacked to death on February 26, about two weeks after he came to Bangladesh from the US to visit his family and see two of his books published in the country's annual book fair.

Police are yet to identify the killers, let alone arrest them. His wife Rafida Ahmed Bonya was also injured in the attack.

Over a dozen policemen were on duty in the night Avijit was attacked around 8:45pm and the area was overseen by around 70 CCTV cameras at that time, police said.

Barely half an hour after the attack, a militant outfit calling itself Ansar Bangla 7 tweeted: “Allahu Akbar [Allah is great]!!! Brothers We can!!! Target down here in # Bangladesh.”

Earlier in February 2013, Ahmed Rajib Haider, a progressive blogger, was hacked to death in the capital's Mirpur. Detectives found that militant outfit Ansarullah Bangla Team was behind his murder.

Two other militant outfits Ansar Al Islam Bangladesh 2 and Ansar Al Islam emerged last year after the murder of a Rajshahi University teacher, AKM Shafiul Islam, and an anchor of an Islamic programme on Channel i, Sheikh Nurul Islam Faruqi. 

Police are still in the dark about who had murdered the teacher and the anchor.

Prof Roy believes that this culture of impunity has given militants a free hand.

“You have seen what happened to your son, haven't you? Have faith on Allah… better learn your lesson before time runs out,” an unidentified caller told Prof Ajoy three hours after Avijit died.