Here's a sticky one. The International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) of Bangladesh, originally set up to investigate war crimes after the genocide of the 1971 war, by Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, has turned itself inside out and made itself an authority to try his daughter, Sheikh Hasina. Following this, demands for her return have started afresh, fulfilling basic legal requirements, all of which places Delhi in an awkward position. It cannot in all conscience send back a 78-year-old to face punishment against a system that is heavily loaded against her. Letting her stay risks ties with an important neighbour, at least till the erratic Mohammad Yunus remains in power, or even beyond. A favorable decision on Hasina will be politically sensitive to any government that comes to power.

The courts themselves are part of the irony. Under Mujibur Rehman, they did nothing in terms of punishing anyone for war crimes, as he made up with Islamabad and then opted to let things slide. His daughter, however, made it an election issue, and the court was set up under international standards, and with assistance from international jurists to do its work. And it did. That included trials of persons such as Abdul Qader Mollah, Assistant Secretary of the Jamaat-e-Islami, not only for shooting some 300-plus people, but also raping a 11-year-old. Other lights of the Jamaat followed, with much widespread support for those undeniably guilty of war crimes even as the Pakistan army rampaged through the country. 

But the ICT has since changed its make up. One hint is that the Chief Prosecutor, Tajul Islam, defended a raft of Jamaat leaders between 2013 and 2016. It's also worth noting that there's nothing 'international' about it. At no time did it succeed in getting the perpetrators in Pakistan.

Meanwhile, it has been divided into two sections, with Tribunal-1........

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