Avijit Roy

In 2015, Roy went to Dhaka with his wife Bonya during the Ekushey Book Fair. On the evening of 26 February, he and Bonya were returning home from the fair by bicycle rickshaw. At around 8:30 pm, they were attacked near the Teacher Student Center intersection of Dhaka University by unidentified assailants. Two assailants stopped and dragged them from the rickshaw to the pavement before striking them with machetes, according to witnesses. Roy was struck and stabbed with sharp weapons in the head. His wife was slashed on her shoulders and the fingers of her left hand were severed. Both of them were rushed to Dhaka Medical College Hospital, where Roy was pronounced dead around 10:30 pm. Bonya survived. In an interview with BBC's Newshour, she said that police stood nearby when they were attacked on the spot but did not act.

In a Twitter post on the day after his death, an Islamist group, calling itself Ansar Bangla-7, claimed responsibility for the killing. Ansar Bangla-7 is said to be the same organization as Ansarullah Bangla Team. A case of murder was filed by Roy's father without naming any suspects at Shahbagh thana on 27 February 2015. According to police sources, they are investigating a local Islamist group that praised the killing.

Avijit's body was placed at Aparajeyo Bangla in front of the Faculty of Arts building (Kala Bhavan) at Dhaka University on 1 March 2015 where people from all walks of life, including his friends, relatives, well-wishers, teachers and students, gathered with flowers to pay their respect to the writer. As per Roy's wish, his body was handed over to Dhaka Medical College for medical research.

On 6 March 2015, a four-member team of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) along with detective branch of Bangladesh Police inspected the spot where Roy was killed. The FBI members collected evidence from the site and took footage to help in the investigation.

3 May 2015, the leader of Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) claimed responsibility for the murder of Roy and the deaths of other "blasphemers" in Bangladesh in a report published by SITE intelligence group.

On 2 March 2015, Rapid Action Battalion arrested Farabi Shafiur Rahman, a radical Islamist. It was suspected by the police that Farabi had shared Roy's location, identity, family photographs, etc. with the killer(s). Farabi had threatened Roy several times through blogs and social media sites including Facebook. He said on different posts and comments that Roy would be killed upon his arrival in Dhaka.

On 18 August 2015, three members of Ansarullah Bangla Team, including a British citizen, named Touhidur Rahman who police described as "the main planner of the attacks on Avijit Roy and Ananta Bijoy Das", had been arrested in connection with the two murders.

Humanist groups expressed horror at the loss of a colleague. The Center for Inquiry's chief UN representative stated "Avijit was brilliant, yes, and a devoted advocate of free expression and secularism, but also just a very good person." Andrew Copson of the British Humanist Association, which awarded Roy and other bloggers the Free Expression Award in 2014, said "With Avijit’s death, Bangladesh has lost not just a son, but a forceful proponent of human rights and equality for all its people."

A Bangladeshi group, Blogger and Online Activist Network (BOAN), initiated the 2013 Shahbag protests that sought capital punishment for the Islamist leader and war criminal Abdul Quader Molla as well as the removal of Jamaat-e-Islami from politics. Islamist groups responded by organising protests calling for the execution of "atheist bloggers" accused of insulting Islam, and the introduction of a blasphemy law. Many atheist bloggers who supported the Shahbag protests came under attack, and Ahmed Rajib Haider was killed by Islamist groups on 15 February 2013. A month before the protest, blogger Asif Mohiuddin was attacked outside his house by four youths influenced by Anwar al-Awlaki, and Sunnyur Rahman, known as Nastik Nobi (Atheist Prophet), was stabbed on 7 March 2013.

In 2006, he moved to Atlanta, Georgia and worked as a software engineer. Roy published eight books in Bengali.

Roy was the founder of the Bangladeshi Mukto-Mona (freethinkers) website which was one of the nominees of The Bobs (Best of Blogs) Award in the Best of Online Activism category. The site published death threats that author Humayun Azad had received before he was assassinated. Mukto-Mona began as a Yahoo group in May 2001, but became a website in 2002.

Avijit Roy (Bengali: অভিজিৎ রায় ; 12 September 1972 – 26 February 2015) was a Bangladeshi-American Engineer, online activist, writer and blogger known for creating and administrating the Mukto-Mona, an Internet community for Bangladeshi freethinkers, rationalists, skeptics, atheists and humanists. Roy was an advocate of free expression in Bangladesh, coordinating international protests against government censorship and imprisonment of atheist bloggers. He was hacked to death by machete-wielding assailants in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on 26 February 2015; Islamic militant organization Ansarullah Bangla Team claimed responsibility for the attack.