Asim Umar, the head of the militants Al Qaeda in the India Subcontinent (AQIS), stated in a video that his organization killed the US-based atheist Bangladeshi blogger, Avijit Roy, according to SITE, a US website that monitors extremist groups, on Monday.
Forty-year-old Roy and his 36-year-old wife, Rafida Bonya Ahmed, were reported to be walking near the area of the Dhaka University, on February 26, when they were attacked brutally. The AQIS have also simultaneously claimed as being responsible for murdering other ‘blasphemers’ too, as termed by them in the nation of Bangladesh.
Bangladeshi authorities and other associated officials had earlier said a local Islamist group, Ansarullah Bangla Team, which claimed that it had killed Roy soon after the attack, was behind the blogger’s murder. Roy’s death had sparked several controversies leading to hundreds of protesters rallying and rioting in the capital city of Dhaka, to denounce Roy’s murder and Islamic fundamentalism.
“Now we have to investigate whether this Team is working as al Qaeda’s branch,” Dhaka police chief Muhammad Habibur Rahman told Reuters news agency, in his press statement.
