The Pulse | Diplomacy | South Asia

Bangladesh-India Relations Hit Fresh Turbulence

Bangladesh expressed “outrage” even as India said it had nothing to do with Sheikh Hasina’s online media engagement at the Awami League presser in New Delhi.

File photo of Bangladesh’s former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, May 2, 2024.

Bangladesh’s former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has said she will return to her country in December this year, almost two and a half years after fleeing to India following violent student protests that culminated in the ouster of her government.

In a message delivered online to Indian and foreign journalists in New Delhi on August 5, Hasina said her decision to return home was based on her desire to serve her country and its people. Acknowledging the possibility of imprisonment or even execution if she returned to Bangladesh, Hasina said that such apprehensions would not deter her.

“My return, and the return of the Awami League to the democratic process, is not about power. It is about putting Bangladesh back on the right track,” Hasina said. She also defended her government’s action against protesters who she said had destroyed public infrastructure and vandalized monuments associated with Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, who led Bangladesh’s liberation war in 1971 and became independent Bangladesh’s first president.

Hasina’s media interaction drew an angry response from the Bangladesh Nationalist Party government, which expressed “outrage” over India allowing the press conference to be organized in Delhi. “Dhaka deeply regrets that in spite of concerns conveyed a priori to the Government of India about the likely ramifications of this event on the reset of our bilateral relations, this public event was permitted to be held,” it said. That it took place on the very day that Bangladesh was observing the second anniversary of Hasina’s ouster was “an affront to the sovereignty of Bangladesh and a grievous insult to the martyrs of the July Revolution,” it added.

On the eve of Hasina’s online interaction with the media, India distanced itself from the Hasina event, saying it had no role in it nor had it endorsed it. The Awami League presser was hosted by the Foreign Correspondents Club of South Asia in New Delhi.

But that did not convince Bangladesh.

Hasina had deployed extreme force to quell the protests of summer 2024, which led to over a thousand people getting killed in the crackdown. She was forced to step down on August 5, 2024.

She fled to India after the fall of her government. India’s sheltering of Hasina since then has irked Bangladeshis immensely, especially after November 2025, when a special Bangladeshi tribunal convicted and sentenced Hasina and her Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal to death for crimes against humanity. Besides, Hasina had issued statements and given media interviews while in India, prompting Dhaka to repeatedly ask India to curb her political activities on Indian soil. Dhaka has also sought her extradition to face justice in Bangladesh. However, India has ignored Dhaka’s requests.

Forcing Hasina back to Bangladesh is not an option for India. Her return of her own volition may help ease the current tensions in Bangladesh-India ties.

There is some speculation that India has been working behind the scenes with........

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