HC grants bail to Farabi in blogger Avijit Roy murder case
Duration of interim bail will be known once written order issued
The High Court has granted bail to Shafiur Rahman Farabi, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in the case over the murder of blogger and writer Avijit Roy.
The bench, comprising Judge Zakir Hossain and Judge KM Rasheduzzaman Raja, passed the order on Wednesday. Senior lawyer SM Shahjahan represented Farabi in court, assisted by lawyer Muhammad Hujjatul Islam Khan.
Speaking on the matter, advocate Hujjatul Islam said, "The High Court accepted Farabi's appeal against the trial court verdict in 2021. Now, he has been granted interim bail. The duration of the bail will be known once the written order is issued."
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In support of the bail plea, it was argued that although four co-accused gave confessional statements in the case, none of them mentioned Farabi's name. Additionally, no witness – except the investigating officer – linked him to the crime, and Farabi himself did not give any confessional statement.
Farabi, a former student of Chittagong University, has been behind bars since March 2015 when he was arrested as the key suspect in the Avijit murder.
Known for his campaigns against free thinkers on social media and blogsphere, he was arrested as the key suspect in the Avijit murder. He allegedly had issued repeated threats to the writer.
On 26 February 2015, Mukto Mona blog founder Avijit Roy, son of late physicist Ajoy Roy, was hacked to death, while his wife Banya escaped with serious injuries after unidentified assailants attacked them with cleavers near TSC on the Dhaka University campus as they were returning home from the Amor Ekushey Boi Mela.
Avijit's father filed a murder case with Shahbagh Police Station the very next day.
On 16 February 2021, a tribunal in Dhaka sentenced five members of the banned militant outfit Ansar-Al-Islam to death and another to life term imprisonment in a case over the killing of Avijit Roy.
Judge of the Dhaka Anti-Terrorism Tribunal Md Mujibur Rahman handed down the verdict.
The condemned accused are sacked Major Syed Mohammad Ziaul Haque, a suspected coordinator of the banned militant outfit Ansar-Al-Islam, Mozammel Hossain alias Saimon, Abu Siddiq Sohel alias Sakib alias Sajid alias Shahab, and Akram Hossain alias Abir, Md Arafat Rahman. The tribunal also fined them Tk50,000 each.
The tribunal also sentenced Farabi to life imprisonment and also fined him Tk50,000, in default, to suffer two years more imprisonment.
In late August last year, Islamist cleric Mufti Jasim Uddin Rahmani, arrested on 12 August 2013 in a case filed over the killing of another blogger, Rajib Haider, was freed on bail in a case filed under the Anti-Terrorism Act.
Rajib was hacked to death in front of his house in the Palashnagar area of Pallabi in the capital on the night of 15 February 2013.
A Dhaka court sentenced Jasim to five years in prison in the murder case.
