Uproot Avijit’s killers

The killers of free-thinking Avijit Roy are not unknown. The dark forces that fear light, that cannot tolerate difference of opinion, are the ones that killed this meritorious engineer who lived in the US. He had left the Boi Mela and was walking from TSC towards Suhrawardy Uddyan, when miscreants attacked him with large knives. His wife Rafida Ahmed was seriously injured too, while trying to save him, and is in a critical condition in hospital.

This incident is both brutal and painful. We have no words strong enough to express our condemnation of this despicable killing. Avijit may have been en engineer by profession, but he would promote free thought. He established the Mukto Mona blog. Militants had already threatened to kill him because of his writings against narrow religious bias. Yet the law enforcement agencies could not trace them.

Eleven years ago almost in the same place, writer Humayun Azad was killed by miscreants. Another blogger, Rajiv, was killed by the same group in 2013. Does that mean there can be no independent thought and expression in independent Bangladesh? Will this simply result in death? Is our state unable to nab the killers?

In the meantime, a suspicious militant group under the name of Ansar Bangla-7, has claimed responsibility for the murder. The law and order forces said, as always, they will find the killers by all means. We demand that Avijit’s killer be caught and tried immediately. This is not just a matter of law and order. All positive forces of society must unite to uproot this terrorist force.

Avijit’s father is an eminent educationist and physicist, Ajay Roy. All his life he has fought for independent thinking, yet his son has been killed by the dark forces of vengeance. We know that there is nothing to ease his pain. Even so, we would like to tell Prof. Roy, “We are with you.”