NEW DELHI: Four weeks after ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled Bangladesh by helicopter during a student-led uprising, experts say she has become a diplomatic headache for India. Hasina’s iron-fisted regime came to an end last month as protest demonstrators marched on her palace in Dhaka following 15 years characterized by rights abuses and crackdowns.
Bangladeshi students who led the revolution are demanding Hasina’s return from India, her biggest benefactor before her ouster and to be tried for the killing of peaceful protestors during the revolt. But sending Sheikh Hasina back risks undermining New Delhi’s standing with its other neighbors in South Asia, where it is waging an aggressive battle for influence with Beijing.
“India is obviously not going to want to expel her back to Dhaka,” said Thomas Kean of the conflict resolution think-tank International Crisis Group. He said that the message that would send to other leaders in the region who are close to New Delhi would not be a very positive one… that eventually, New Delhi will not protect you,” Thomas Kean said.
Earlier, India saw its close presidential candidate in the Maldives lose to a political rival that tilted the country towards China. Sheikh Hasina’s toppling lost New Delhi its closest ally in the region. Those who suffered under Sheikh Hasina’s regime in Bangladesh are openly hostile to New Delhi for the abuses committed by her government.
AFP reported that hostility has smoldered through megaphone diplomacy waged by extremist Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and directed towards Bangladesh’s caretaker set up. But PM Modi, who has made championing the Hindu faith a main plank of his regime, has repeatedly urged Yunus’s government to protect Hindu minority in Bangladesh.
Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, a top leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, stated India had put “all its fruit in one basket” by supporting Sheikh Hasina, and even did not know how to reverse course. “The people of Bangladesh want good ties with New Delhi, but not at the cost of their interests,” according to Alamgir, one of thousands of BNP activists arrested during Hasina’s regime. He said that the attitude of New Delhi unfortunately is not conducive to creating confidence.
Such is the environment of distrust, when deadly floods washed through both nations in August some people in Bangladesh blamed New Delhi for the deaths and damages that resulted. Bangladesh’s interim administration has not publicly raised the matter of Sheikh Hasina taking refuge in New Delhi, her last official whereabouts is a military airbase near New Delhi — but Dhaka has revoked her diplomatic passport, stopping her from travelling onwards.
The two sides have a bilateral extradition treaty first inked in 2013 which would permit her return to face criminal trial. A clause in the agreement, however, says extradition might be declined if the offence is of a “political character”. India’s ex-ambassador to Bangladesh, Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty, said that the bilateral ties are too important for Dhaka to sour it by pressing for Sheikh Hasina’s return.
