Rafida Ahmed Bonya, the wife of slain writer-blogger Avijit Roy, has told her father-in-law she could easily identify the killers if she saw them again.
Bonya, also a blogger, was injured and lost a thumb in the Feb 26 attack near TSC at Dhaka University. Both were leaving the Amar Ekushey Book Fair when the assailants pounced on them at night.
Avijit was hacked fatally on the head by sharp weapons.
Bonya, who is also a US citizen as her husband was, recently went back to the United States for better treatment.
Her father-in-law Prof Ajay Roy, based on their last conservations, says Bonya will be able to identify the killers if she sees them.
The former Dhaka University teacher on Tuesday told bdnews24.com: “I spoke to Bonya (Monday night). She gave her statement to police before leaving the country. She will give statement again, if needed.”
“She (Bonya) says she remembers their faces,” he added when asked whether Bonya would be able to recognise them.
According to Bonya, there were at least five attackers and all of them were around 25 years of age. “They were wearing jeans and T-shirt. None of them had beards.”
Police are yet to identify or arrest the assassins who killed Avijit in an attack strikingly similar to the attacks that killed legendary writer Humyun Azad and blogger and pro-liberation war activist Ahmed Rajib Haider.
Investigators suspected religious fanatics murdered Avijit for his writing and blogging against communalism and religious superstition, DB’s Deputy Commissioner Krishnapada Roy on Tuesday told bdnews24.com.
“The detectives are working on it,” he said.
The writer had been receiving death threats for quite sometime, his family said.
A murder case filed by father Roy on Feb 27.
So far, police have arrested only extremist blogger Shafiur Rahman Farabi, who had threatened on Facebook to kill Avijit, an Atlanta-based bioengineer by profession.
However, despite questioning him in custody for 10 days, the detectives are yet to tease out anything significant that may help solve the murder mtstery.
Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s Joint Commissioner Monirul Islam recently said they were working to arrest 10 more people who had threatened Avijit on social media.
An FBI team is also assisting the Bangladesh investigators in the case.
DB officials on Tuesday also secured a court’s permission to test the evidence, collected in the murder, in FBI’s laboratory.
Source: Bd news24
