A team of FBI agents yesterday collected evidence from the spot where blogger-writer Avijit Roy was killed and some nearby areas on the Dhaka University campus.
Four agents of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation went to the crime scene near the TSC on the DU campus around 1:30pm and took several hundred pictures. They also visited the Bangla Academy premises and the Suhrawardy Udyan and took snaps.
Meanwhile, Avijit’s father Ajoy Roy, a former professor of physics at Dhaka University, yesterday told the Dhaka Tribune that local investigators were chasing the wrong people.
An 11-member detective team of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) – the first party investigators – accompanied the FBI agents.
Before they left the area in the afternoon, Krishnapada Ray, a deputy commissioner of the Detective Branch, briefly talked to journalists.
He said the FBI team collected related evidence from the spot. “On Thursday, they [FBI team] sat with the local investigators to discuss how they can support us technically and how we can reciprocate...We expect to work through mutual cooperation.”
Asked whether the US detectives are working independently, Krishnapada said the FBI team is here in Bangladesh to assist the local investigators.
A US-based Bangladeshi, Avijit Roy was hacked to death near the TSC roundabout on DU campus on the evening of February 26. In the same attack, Avijit’s wife Rafida Ahmed Bonya, also an active blogger, got critically injured.
Last week, she was flown to the US under the arrangements of the US embassy in Dhaka. Before she left Dhaka, an FBI representative stationed in Dhaka met her at the Square Hospital.
According to sources, the US government files a case and holds a symbolic trial at home if one of their citizens dies in a terror attack in another country. The same things may also happen in case of Avijit. That probe and trial will be based on the information that investigators in Bangladesh collect.
Sources said they might even take the accused persons to the US and conclude the trial there.
Avijit, the founder of a progressive blogging site named Mukto-Mona, had been involved in open rows with orthodox Islamist online activists, especially with an alleged militant named Shafiur Rahman Farabi.
Farabi has in the past openly threatened on social media to kill Avijit if he came to Bangladesh. The couple had come home this year for the February book fair in which two of Avijit’s books were launched.
The couple had gone to the fair to attend the launch and got attacked on their way back.
On March 2, RAB arrested Farabi in Jatrabari area when he was trying to leave Dhaka. According to RAB, Farabi confessed that he had threatened to kill Avijit but said he had nothing to do with the murder.
Later, he was handed over to DB who showed him arrested in the murder case as the prime suspect. The next day, a Dhaka court remanded Farabi to police custody for 10 days for interrogation. However, the detectives are yet to make any breakthrough.
DB said two young men had come on a CNG-run autorickshaw, attacked the couple and quickly fled the scene going in separate directions.
However, while talking to the Dhaka Tribune yesterday, Avijit’s father Prof Ajoy Roy differed with DB’s version. He said Farabi was not present at the crime scene.
“There were two killers and they fled the scene on a motorbike. They are yet to be arrested. Police should have chased the motorbike after the attack, but they did not,” Prof Roy said.
He also said their family was now seeing a ray of hope after the FBI got involved in the investigation.
“They [FBI] will not drop this matter soon. They will not leave Dhaka without making a breakthrough,” Prof Ajoy said.
The FBI team arrived in Dhaka on Wednesday after the Bangladesh government responded positively to an offer from the US government to engage the agency in the probe.