Sheikh Hasina applies for new passport as exiled allies say she plans December return
Former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, living in self-imposed exile in Delhi since she fled to India in August 2024 after a mass uprising against her authoritarian rule, applied this week for a fresh passport. Exiled Awami League figures say she is confident of returning in December. Last November a tribunal convicted her of crimes against humanity and sentenced her to death over a crackdown on a student uprising that left an estimated 1,400 people dead. She rejects the charges and calls the tribunal illegitimate.
On Monday a UK lawyer acting for her wrote to Bangladesh’s high commission asking for a new passport and national identity card “in a timely fashion.” A party leader in Kolkata, speaking anonymously, said she genuinely wants to go back and would seek a travel pass if a passport is refused. She first floated a return in August; several other party figures have already gone home in anticipation. The Awami League remains banned and thousands of its members are in jail. If she is allowed in, she is likely to be arrested at once.
Dhaka has pressed India to extradite her; New Delhi, close to Hasina while she was in power, has ignored that, straining ties. This week the Bangladesh government said that as a “terrorist” she could return only under an “acceptable prisoner exchange” in the India-Bangladesh extradition treaty. The tribunal’s chief prosecutor called her announcement a political stunt. Analysts see an attempt to revive her base and unsettle the government of Prime Minister Tarique Rahman, elected in February in the country’s first democratic vote in decades, amid inflation and protests that shut garment factories. Former MP Mustaque Ahmed Ruhi returned in September and was arrested over an alleged murder during the 2024 uprising. Other exiled leaders say they will follow her despite in-absentia sentences they call kangaroo-court verdicts.
Continue in the app — vote & join in ➔