Friends and family of slain Bangladeshi-born blogger Avijit Roy said the outspoken humanist had been receiving death threats since 2012.
An engineer by profession, Avijit rose to prominence with Bangla-language blog site Mukto-mona, which promoted freedom of conscience, reason, and secularism.
A childhood friend, asking not to be named, said Avijit began to receive threats on numerous websites and from several Facebook accounts after the publication of Obisshasher Dorshon in 2012.
Rokomari.com, a popular Bangladeshi e-commerce site, dropped the book from its catalogue after its owner received death threats.
The website still refrains from selling any of the nine books, mostly on science, authored by Avijit.
In 2013, after he denounced the killing of fellow blogger Rajeeb Haider, Avijit was threatened with death again.
The publication of Bishwaser Virus (The Virus of Faith) in 2014 set off another round of death threats.
Extremist blogger Farabi Shafiur Rahman is one militant with whom Avijit is known to have debated online.
His exchanges with Avijit resulted in death threats against the blogger.
Farabi is known to have aired questionable views of the Qur’an to defend the blogs he has written.
Avijit countered Farabi’s claims with citations and references in notes and status updates posted on Facebook and on his blog, earning the wrath of Farabi and his followers.
“Avijit Roy lives in America. So it is not possible to kill him now. He will be killed as soon as he returns home,” Farabi wrote.
Responding to his posts against “atheists,” most of Farabi’s followers said they ought to be killed to protect Islam.
Farabi’s Facebook profile has around 25,000 followers.
Avijit, a naturalised US citizen, was mortally wounded in an attack on Thursday that left his wife, Rafida Ahmed Bonna, badly injured.
In a recent Facebook post, Avijit defended atheism, calling it a “rational concept to oppose any unscientific or irrational belief.”
On November 24 last year, Farabi said Avijit was not an atheist, but a Hindu. “He acts like an atheist only to mislead the Muslim boys. To prove his neutrality, Avijit sometimes criticises the gods and goddesses of his own religion.”
In a post, the slain blogger wrote: “I am an atheist, but most of my close friends are Muslims. I have no wrath towards them. I join them when they celebrate. I feel hurt when they are oppressed ... I did it earlier and will continue to do so in the future. This is what I have learnt as a humanist.”
“Why does Farabi accuse me of something that I did not say? Because he is desperate to prove that he has vast knowledge on Islam. So he wants to prove me wrong by accusing me falsely of saying something,” Avijit wrote.
Farabi also warned Avijit of consequences for supporting Gonojagoron Moncho, a youth-based platform run by online activists who demand capital punishment for all the war criminals of 1971, Avijit’s friend said.
A critic of the prime minister and the ruling government, Farabi, according to a post of February 4 this year, said he had wanted to meet Mufti Jasim Uddin Rahmania, chief of Ansarullah Bangla Team at Kashimpur jail. But he could not.
On that day, he reportedly appeared before the Dhaka Metropolitan Sessions Judge Court in the case against him.
Now on bail, Farabi, is an accused in a case filed under the ICT Act for issuing a death threat to the imam of a mosque who had performed funeral prayers for slain blogger Ahmed Rajeeb Haider.
Haider, an active participant of the Shahbagh movement, was labelled an atheist after he was killed on February 15, 2013.
Avijit and his wife Bonna arrived in Bangladesh on February 16 for the publication of two of his books at this year’s book fair.
Author of 10 books and an e-book, Avijit wrote around 600 blogs on his Mukto-mona (freethinker) platform and for other websites. His books cover issues ranging from the beginning of the universe, science of religion, love, homosexuality to psychology.
