Bangladesh has rejected ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s request for a new passport and pressed India to hand her over under the two countries’ extradition treaty, in a sharp escalation of the standoff over the exiled leader’s announced plan to return home in December.
Hasina’s lawyers at London-based Matrix Chambers wrote on November 9 to Preeti Rahman, Bangladesh’s acting high commissioner in New Delhi, asking for a new Bangladeshi passport and national identity card to be issued expeditiously, on the basis of her Bangladeshi nationality and obligations under international human rights instruments, according to reports. Her previous passport and national identity card were revoked by the interim government, the letter said.
Dhaka swiftly rejected the request. ‘Bangladesh does not give passports to terrorists who kill thousands of people and flee,’ State Minister for Foreign Affairs Humaiun Kobir told Al Jazeera, according to reports. ‘It will work under the current extradition arrangements with India to pursue and get the terrorist Hasina handed over.’ Kobir said she must be brought back from Delhi under the existing extradition treaty, and that if she intends to return, she must surrender to the court to serve her sentence.
Government sees no legal obstacle to extradition
The government will bring Hasina back from India through the extradition process, as it sees no legal complications in securing her return under the existing treaty, Prime Minister’s Information and Broadcasting Adviser Zahed Ur Rahman said at a press briefing in Dhaka on Tuesday, November 10, according to The Business Standard.
Zahed said Hasina was not merely an accused person but had been convicted by the International Crimes Tribunal, with the trial of the crimes against her already completed. Bangladesh has an extradition treaty with India under which it can seek information about a fugitive, request her arrest and ask the Indian government to hand her over, he said. Legal complications could arise if the person concerned approached a court to challenge the process, he added.
Zahed also said Hasina had not personally submitted any passport application so far. Bangladesh’s press minister in Delhi had received a letter from a law firm requesting arrangements to issue a passport to her, but she had not submitted an application herself, he said, according to the report.
A return announced, a sentence waiting
Hasina, who has lived in self-imposed exile in India since August 2024 after a mass uprising forced her from power, has announced she will return to Bangladesh in December regardless, according to her Awami League party. She was sentenced to death in absentia last year for crimes against humanity over a deadly crackdown on the student-led protests in 2024, a charge she denies.
On Tuesday, the Bangladeshi prosecutor Md Aminul Islam, who secured the death sentence at the Dhaka-based International Crimes Tribunal, said she will be executed if she returns home. ‘Sheikh Hasina has no option but to face the execution of the verdict,’ Islam told reporters, according to reports.
India’s foreign ministry did not respond to Reuters this week, according to reports. In April it said it was examining Bangladesh’s extradition request. New Delhi has signalled it views the passport application as a bilateral matter between the Bangladeshi authorities and their own national, and that extradition must be handled under the treaty’s legal and judicial processes. No travel date, document or Indian decision has been announced.
Sources: Reuters (via reports), The Business Standard, Mirror Now, Al Jazeera (via reports), The Daily Star (via reports)
