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Delhi is keeping Dhaka’s security concerns in mind. Tarique Rahman should remember this

India-Bangladesh ties can only improve if there is a new, clean slate. The two need to respect each other’s trigger lines.

If trade ties and cultural exchanges are important for neighbouring countries to remain allies, respecting each other’s red lines becomes the most critical aspect of that alliance.

During former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s almost 20-year tenure, which ended on 5 August 2024, Bangladesh was India’s key strategic ally, despite points of contention between Delhi and Dhaka. But Hasina made sure India’s security red lines were never crossed by Bangladesh.

By arresting young Bangladeshi politician Osman Hadi’s alleged killers in West Bengal in March, Delhi has extended a hand of friendship to the new government under BNP’s Tarique Rahman. Dhaka, too, should reciprocate this act of friendship.

A political killing, and a fallout

On 12 December 2025, 32-year-old Osman Hadi, a prominent leader of Bangladesh’s 2024 student uprising and the spokesperson of the political platform “Inquilab Mancha,” was shot by unknown assailants in Dhaka. He was taken to Singapore for treatment but died as the violence in Bangladesh magnified.

The death of Hadi, an outspoken critic of India, fuelled anti-India hate amid conspiracy theories about the country sheltering his killers.

Mobs attacked Indian missions in Bangladesh and targeted the country’s minority population, leading to the horrific lynching and burning of a Hindu garment worker, Dipu Chandra Das on 18 December, which shocked the world.

But anti-India hate had begun much earlier in Bangladesh, abetted in no small measure by the words and actions of Muhammad Yunus’s interim government. Yunus’ controversial suggestions on the “extension of the Chinese economy” and his framing of India’s northeastern region as “landlocked” during his 18-month tenure led to the soaring of tensions between the two neighbouring countries.

As recently as late October 2025, Yunus went to the extent of gifting Pakistan’s then........

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