Hasina vows December return as Delhi address raises India-Bangladesh tensions

Former Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina has reiterated that she will return to her country in December despite facing arrest and a death sentence, turning her promised homecoming into a test for the government that replaced her and a fresh source of tension between Dhaka and New Delhi.

“I will return to my people,” Hasina said during an audio-only appearance at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of South Asia in New Delhi on Wednesday, 5 August. “I know that they may put me in jail or they may kill me, but still I have to go back,” Reuters reported.

Hasina, 78, did not appear on camera as expected. Her voice was played to journalists from behind a blank screen, while her son Sajeeb Wazed Joy, former education minister Mohibul Hasan Chowdhury Nowfel and other Awami League figures participated by video or in person.

“December is our victory month,” Hasina said, referring to Bangladesh’s victory over Pakistan in the 1971 war of independence. She said the symbolism of the month had influenced her decision, although she did not name a date, route or point of entry.

The announcement was not the first time she had set December as her target. In an interview published on 10 July, Hasina said she and senior Awami League colleagues planned to return voluntarily and surrender before the courts. She said she had neither consulted Dhaka nor any foreign government about the plan.

Bangladesh has repeatedly asked India to extradite Hasina, while India says the request is being examined.

A voluntary return would remove the need for New Delhi to decide the extradition request, but Hasina has provided no evidence of travel arrangements or coordination with either government.

“The authorities in Dhaka want to take me back,” Hasina told Reuters in July. “I will go myself.”

Her August address hardened an existing promise rather than establishing a new timetable, analysts said, adding that its significance lay in the setting, timing and political message. Hasina was speaking to international journalists in the Indian capital on the second anniversary of the uprising that forced her from office.

She called for the ban on the Awami League to be lifted, people she described as political prisoners to be released and judicial independence to be restored. She argued that her return was not an attempt to recover power but to restore democracy, secularism, economic development and public security.

Hasina said the protests that began over public-sector job quotas in July 2024 had been converted into an organized campaign to remove her government outside the electoral process. She cited attacks on police stations, government offices and Awami League members, and accused the administration of former interim leader Muhammad Yunus of stopping an inquiry commissioned by her government.

She also alleged that Awami League members, police officers, journalists, judges, lawyers and religious minorities had since faced killings, arrests or attacks. Independent rights groups have documented arbitrary arrests, mob violence and attacks on perceived Awami League supporters after her fall, but Hasina did not acknowledge her government’s responsibility for the security-force crackdown that preceded it.

A United Nations fact-finding investigation found reasonable grounds to believe that the former government, its security and intelligence agencies and violent elements associated with the Awami League systematically committed serious human-rights violations to suppress the protests.

The UN estimated that as many as 1,400 people may have been killed between 15 July and 5 August 2024, most of them shot by security forces. It also documented violence by protesters and retaliatory attacks after Hasina’s departure, but concluded that the former government pursued a policy of violently repressing the uprising.

Hasina resigned and flew to India on 5 August 2024, ending more than 15 consecutive years in power and about 20 years as prime minister across separate terms.

Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal convicted her and former home minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal in absentia on 17 November 2025. The tribunal found them guilty of crimes against humanity arising from the crackdown and sentenced both to death.

Former police chief Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun, who testified for the prosecution, received a five-year prison term.

Hasina rejects the proceeding as politically motivated and describes the tribunal as a sham. If she returns, she is expected to be arrested immediately and held as a convicted prisoner. Tribunal prosecutors have said a fugitive defendant must surrender before seeking to challenge a judgment.

The verdict has nonetheless drawn criticism from organizations that have also documented grave abuses under Hasina.

Human Rights Watch said accountability was necessary but raised concerns that Hasina and Kamal were tried in their absence, could not choose their lawyers and were sentenced to death after proceedings that failed to meet international standards.

“There is enduring anger and anguish in Bangladesh over Hasina’s repressive rule,” the organization said, while insisting that prosecutions must satisfy fair-trial requirements.

Amnesty International called the trial and sentence “neither fair nor just,” citing the speed of the case, inadequate time for the defense and reported limits on cross-examination. The UN described the verdict as an important moment for victims but regretted the use of capital punishment.

The Awami League’s activities were prohibited in May 2025 pending trials of the party and its leaders, and the Election Commission suspended its registration. That excluded the party from the February 12 election won by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its allies.

The BNP-led alliance secured 212 of the 299 seats for which results were declared, according to the Election Commission figures. Tarique Rahman became prime minister on 17 February.

Hasina used the New Delhi event to accuse Rahman’s government of presiding over weaker growth, declining investment, factory closures, rising poverty and widespread unemployment.

Some of the underlying economic strain is documented. The World Bank said in April that growth was likely to slow to 3.9% in the 2026 fiscal year, while inflation remained high, private investment was subdued and nonperforming loans had reached 30.6% at the end of 2025.

The World Bank also estimated that the national poverty rate had increased to 21.4% in 2025 from 18.7% in 2022.

Those figures support Hasina’s broader description of an economy under pressure, but the slowdown began before the BNP took office and has been aggravated by banking weaknesses, political uncertainty and the war in the Middle East.

Her claim that more than 20 million people were unemployed is not supported by the latest comparable official measure. The Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics’ 2024 labor-force survey counted about 2.6 million unemployed people. Hasina did not explain the basis of her substantially larger figure.

Dhaka’s response focused less on those claims than on India allowing the event to proceed.

Bangladesh’s foreign ministry said it was “outraged” that a person it called an “absconding convicted genocider” had been allowed to address journalists in New Delhi.

It described the interaction as an “affront to the sovereignty of Bangladesh” and an insult to those killed in the uprising, according to the statement carried by the state-run Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha.

The ministry said it had warned India in advance that the event could damage attempts to repair bilateral relations. It accused Hasina and her associates of seeking to rewrite the UN’s findings and renewed its demand for her return under the 2013 extradition treaty.

India had distanced itself from the appearance before it took place.

“The government has no involvement whatsoever in it,” external affairs ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said on Tuesday, 4 August.

“Neither does it endorse any views that may be expressed at the forum,” according to the ministry briefing.

New Delhi’s position addressed whether it organized or endorsed the event. It did not resolve Dhaka’s broader objection that a convicted former leader was being allowed to conduct political activity while living in India.

The two countries have had an extradition treaty since 2013. The agreement permits refusal when a request is not made in good faith or in the interests of justice, while its political-offense exception does not automatically cover serious crimes such as murder. India has not publicly announced whether it considers any of those provisions applicable to Hasina.

Bangladesh also warned local news organizations against carrying her remarks, citing a December 2024 tribunal order restricting publication or broadcast of Hasina’s speeches and messages.

The tribunal’s chief prosecutor subsequently said the order was not a blanket ban and applied to statements regarded as hateful, while government officials warned that media outlets could face action.

The political reaction inside Bangladesh was equally hostile. BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir called Hasina’s return promise a “political stunt” and said she would be arrested if she arrived. Syed Moazzem Hossain Alal, an adviser to Rahman, challenged her to return immediately rather than wait until December.

The National Citizen Party (NCP), formed by leaders of the 2024 uprising, demanded that Bangladesh summon India’s high commissioner.

NCP spokesperson Asif Mahmud Shojib Bhuyain accused India of using Hasina as a “pawn” against Bangladesh’s sovereignty and said the party could harden its opposition to any future reconciliation with the Awami League.

Hasina’s son added to the dispute by alleging that Bangladesh had become “another Pakistan on India’s eastern border” and that Pakistan’s intelligence service was operating freely in the country. He also praised the security and treatment India had provided his mother.

Former national cricket captain and Awami League lawmaker Shakib Al Hasan participated in the event. Hours later, unidentified attackers smashed windows and threw petrol bombs at his ancestral home in Magura. The empty building caught fire on an upper floor, but no one was injured, police told Reuters.

Hasina has not disclosed how she intends to enter Bangladesh, which senior colleagues would accompany her or whether India has agreed to facilitate her departure.