The Murder of Avijit Roy

Attack after the book fair

Avijit Roy was a Bangladeshi-born American writer and founder of the Mukto-Mona platform. On February 26, 2015, he and his wife Rafida Ahmed Bonya were leaving the Ekushey Book Fair near Dhaka University when they were attacked. Roy died from his injuries. Bonya survived after sustaining serious wounds.

The case became part of a broader national crisis involving attacks on secular writers, publishers, activists and members of religious minorities. This page does not reproduce extremist propaganda or writings intended to celebrate the attackers; the relevant question here is the criminal investigation and the legal responsibility established against individual defendants.

Investigation and prosecution

Roy's father filed the murder case the day after the attack. Investigators eventually accused members of the banned militant group Ansar al Islam, also known in earlier reporting as Ansarullah Bangla Team. The prosecution relied on evidence including statements, digital communications and other investigative material presented to the Anti-Terrorism Special Tribunal.

Two defendants — Sayed Mohammad Ziaul Haque, often referred to as Major Zia, and Akram Hossain — were tried in absentia. Their fugitive status matters because a sentence entered in absentia is not the same as physical custody or completed enforcement.

The 2021 verdict

On February 16, 2021, Dhaka's Anti-Terrorism Special Tribunal convicted six men. Five — Ziaul Haque, Akram Hossain, Abu Siddiq Sohel, Mozammel Hossain Saimon and Arafat Rahman Siam — received death sentences. Shafiur Rahman Farabi received life imprisonment.

The court's verdict established criminal responsibility at trial. It did not end every legal question. Defence lawyers announced appeals, and the death sentences were subject to Bangladesh's higher-court procedures. Two of the men sentenced to death remained outside custody in later reporting.

Farabi's separate appellate posture

Farabi's case became especially important because his role and punishment followed a different procedural path. His lawyers appealed the life sentence, and the High Court accepted the appeal for hearing. In July 2025, the High Court granted him interim bail while that appeal was still pending.

The state sought to stop the bail. On August 10, 2025, the Appellate Division's chamber judge issued no order on the state's petition, leaving the High Court bail in place. Farabi was released from Kashimpur High Security Central Jail on August 22, 2025.

Bail does not erase his trial-court conviction. It means he was allowed release while the appellate process continued. The latest reliable reporting located for this update still described his appeal as pending rather than finally decided.

Fugitives and incomplete enforcement

Major Zia and Akram Hossain remained absconding in the latest verified reporting used for this page. That means the trial court imposed death sentences on them, but the state had not taken them into custody to enforce those judgments.

Crime by Region therefore does not describe the case as fully closed. A substantial trial verdict exists, but appellate review and fugitive defendants leave parts of the accountability process incomplete.

Rafida Ahmed Bonya

Bonya survived the attack and is not treated here merely as a witness to her husband's murder. She was herself a victim of the same attack and suffered serious injuries. Her survival is an essential part of the case's human context.

Out of respect for both victims, this archive does not reproduce graphic descriptions of the assault. The criminal significance lies in the murder, the attempted killing and the prosecution that followed — not in sensational reconstruction.

Why this file is Partial rather than fully Solved

The 2021 trial established guilt against six defendants. But the legal posture is not uniform: Farabi's appeal was still pending when he obtained bail, and two death-sentenced defendants remained fugitives. Those facts make the case more accurately described as Partially Adjudicated than as completely closed.

If higher courts later alter, confirm or overturn specific convictions or sentences, this page should be updated to reflect those individual outcomes rather than treating the 2021 verdict as permanently frozen.

Timeline

Current status

The Avijit Roy murder case is partially adjudicated. Six defendants were convicted at trial in 2021, but the appellate posture remains incomplete for at least part of the case, and two death-sentenced defendants were still fugitives in the latest verified reporting.

Related Bangladesh case files