Prominent Bangladeshi-American blogger Avijit Roy began one of his final articles by writing that January's Charlie Hebdo massacre in France was "a tragic atrocity committed by soldiers of the so-called religion of peace."

He recalled the case of another secular blogger, Ahmed Rajib Haider, who was hacked to death outside his home in Bangladesh in February 2013 by assailants with machetes.

"The virus of faith was the weapon that made these atrocities possible," Roy wrote in the article, which is to be published in Free Inquiry magazine in April.

On Thursday night, the engineer and writer known for speaking out for secular freedom died after being attacked by machete-wielding assailants in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka, a local police official said.

Roy, the founder of the website Mukto-Mona, and his wife were assaulted as they walked back from a speaking engagement, said Krishna Pada Roy, a deputy commissioner with the Dhaka police.

Police were investigating a "local hard-line religious group" that praised the killing online, the BBC reported.

Ajay Roy, Avijit's father, filed a case of murder with the Shahbagh police on Friday without naming suspects.

The father, a retired professor at Dhaka University, later told reporters his son was killed by extremist and communal groups backed by Jamaat-e-Islami, the main Islamist political party in the country. Avijit Roy had received death threats several times for posting his views on blog, his father said.

Jamaat-e-Islami, however, protested Ajay Roy's statement and demanded punishment of the killers.

Shahbagh police officer-in-charge Sirajul Islam said, "The nature of the attack suggests a fanatic group might have been behind the murder."

See the original post:

US-Bangladeshi blogger Avijit Roy killed