From Delhi to the dock

Ousted Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has told Reuters that she and senior colleagues from her Awami League party intend to return from exile in India around December and surrender to authorities in Dhaka, where she faces a death sentence and her party has been banned.

In a nearly hour-long telephone interview with Reuters late Thursday into Friday, the 78-year-old said she was prepared to face arrest or worse. “Still, I have to go,” she told the news agency, saying she wanted to die on Bangladeshi soil if it came to that, given her family’s history there.

Hasina fled the country in 2024 after weeks of protests brought an end to her 20 years in power spread across multiple terms.

Bangladesh’s war-crimes tribunal sentenced her in November, in absentia, to death for ordering a deadly crackdown on a student-led uprising — charges she has denied from exile.

According to Reuters, a UN report found the crackdown killed as many as 1,400 people.

Reuters reported this is the first time Hasina has laid out a timeline for returning or confirmed that other exiled Awami League figures, including former home minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal, who also faces a death sentence, would surrender alongside her.

The news agency said it could not reach other party members or determine their whereabouts.

Hasina said she had not coordinated the plan with any foreign government and rejected Dhaka’s repeated requests to India for her extradition, telling Reuters she would return on her own terms rather than be sent back.

Bangladeshi government spokespeople did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment, and India’s foreign ministry did not respond either; the ministry said in April it was reviewing the extradition request while seeking to strengthen ties with Dhaka’s new government.

A return by Hasina could deepen political tensions in Bangladesh as its government tries to stabilise the country after two years of turmoil, Reuters noted, while potentially easing friction with India over her continued presence there.

Hasina, who rose to prominence after the 1975 assassination of her father — Bangladesh’s independence leader — and much of her family, went on to lead the country for decades, overseeing strong economic growth even as critics accused her administration of suppressing dissent and eroding democratic institutions, allegations she rejects.

She told Reuters that many Awami League members have been arrested, sued or attacked since her fall from power, and that she wants a public trial to expose what she called the flaws in Bangladesh’s judicial process.

She declined to specify an exact return date or which court she would appear before.

Hasina also said she has held online meetings covering 125 of Bangladesh’s 300 parliamentary constituencies as part of an effort to reorganise the Awami League, and argued that even if she is barred from contesting elections, the party itself should be allowed to stand and let voters decide its fate.