Roy was an American citizen of Bangladeshi provenance and a critic of religious extremism. He was publicly assaulted by machete-wielding assassins who butchered him to death as he and his wife were leaving a Dhaka book fair in February 2015. His wife, Rafida Ahmed, suffered head injuries and lost a finger.
The Satanic Temple (TST) filed suit against the city of Boston, Massachusetts. The city provides council members the choice of who gives the invocation before each meeting when they should be accepting requests from any community member to cite the prayer without regard for which deity they worship.