New Delhi, India \u2013<\/strong> Shima Akhter, 24, was in the middle of football practice when her friend stopped the session to break some news for her: Sheikh Hasina, the fugitive former prime minister of Bangladesh, had been sentenced to death.<\/p>\n To the University of Dhaka student, it felt like a moment of vindication.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n Several of Akhter\u2019s friends were killed in a crackdown on protesters by Hasina\u2019s security forces last year before Hasina finally quit office and fled Bangladesh. The International Crimes Tribunal in Dhaka, which tried the 78-year-old leader for crimes against humanity, sentenced Hasina to death after a months-long trial that found her guilty of ordering a deadly crackdown on the uprising last year.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fascist Hasina thought she could not be defeated, that she could rule forever,\u201d Akhter said from Dhaka. \u201cA death sentence for her is a step towards justice for our martyrs.\u201d<\/p>\n But, Akhter added, the sentencing itself wasn\u2019t enough.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to see her hanged here in Dhaka!\u201d she said.<\/p>\n That won\u2019t happen easily.<\/p>\n Hasina, who fled Dhaka as protesters stormed her home in August 2024, remains far from the gallows for now, living in exile in New Delhi.<\/p>\n Hasina\u2019s presence in India despite repeated requests from Bangladesh to hand her over has been a key source of friction between the South Asian neighbours over the past 15 months. Now, with Hasina formally convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death, those tensions are expected to rise to new heights. Even though India is eager to build a partnership with a post-Hasina Dhaka, several geopolitical analysts said they cannot envision a scenario in which New Delhi turns the former prime minister over to Bangladesh to face the death penalty.<\/p>\n \u201cHow can New Delhi push her towards her death?\u201d former Indian High Commissioner to Dhaka Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty said.<\/p>\n Hasina, Bangladesh\u2019s longest serving prime minister, is the eldest daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who led the war for independence from Pakistan in 1971.<\/p>\n She first became prime minister in 1996. Defeated in the 2001 election, she was out of power until she won again in 2009. She remained in office for 15 years after that, winning elections that opposition parties often boycotted or were banned from contesting in amid a broader hardline turn. Thousands of people were forcibly disappeared. Many were killed extrajudicially. Torture cases became common, and her opponents were jailed without trials.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, her government touted its economic record to justify her rule. Bangladesh, which former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had once called a \u201cbasket case\u201d economy, has in recent years witnessed rapid gross domestic product growth and has outpaced India\u2019s per capita income.<\/p>\n But in July 2024, a student protest that initially began over government job quotas for descendants of those who fought in the 1971 war of independence from Pakistan escalated into a nationwide call for Hasina to go after a brutal crackdown by security forces.<\/p>\n Student protesters clashed with armed police in Dhaka, and nearly 1,400 people were killed, according to estimates by the United Nations.<\/p>\n Hasina, a longtime ally of India, fled to New Delhi on August 5, 2024, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus took over as interim leader. Yunus\u2019s government has since moved to build closer ties with Pakistan amid tensions with India, including over Dhaka\u2019s insistence that New Delhi expel Hasina.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, Dhaka\u2019s Ministry of Foreign Affairs raised the pitch against New Delhi further. The ministry cited an extradition agreement with India and said it was an \u201cobligatory responsibility\u201d for New Delhi to ensure Hasina\u2019s return to Bangladesh. It added that it \u201cwould be a highly unfriendly act and a disregard for justice\u201d for India to continue to provide Hasina refuge.<\/p>\n Political analysts in India, however, pointed out to Al Jazeera that an exception exists in the extradition treaty in cases in which the offence is \u201cof a political character\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIndia understands this [Hasina\u2019s case] to be political vindictiveness of the ruling political forces in Bangladesh,\u201d said Sanjay Bhardwaj, a professor of South Asian studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.<\/p>\n In New Delhi\u2019s view, Bhardwaj told Al Jazeera, Bangladesh is today ruled by \u201canti-India forces\u201d. Yunus has frequently criticised India, and leaders of the protest movement that ousted Hasina have often blamed New Delhi for its support of the former prime minister.<\/p>\n Against this backdrop, \u201chanding over Hasina would mean legitimising\u201d those opposed to India,\u00a0Bhardwaj added.<\/p>\n India said in a Ministry of External Affairs statement that it has \u201cnoted the verdict\u201d against Hasina and New Delhi \u201cwill always engage constructively with all stakeholders\u201d.<\/p>\n India said it \u201cremains committed to the best interests of the people of Bangladesh, including in peace, democracy, inclusion and stability in that country\u201d.<\/p>\n Yet the relationship between New Delhi and Dhaka today is frosty. The flourishing economic, security and political alliance that existed under Hasina has now morphed into ties characterised by mistrust.<\/p>\n Chakravarty, the former Indian high commissioner, said he does not expect that to change soon.<\/p>\n \u201cUnder this government [in Dhaka], the relationship will remain strained because they will keep saying that India is not giving us Hasina back,\u201d Chakravarty told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n But he said Bangladesh\u2019s elections scheduled in February could offer a new opening. Even though Hasina\u2019s Awami League is banned from contesting and most other major political forces \u2013 including the biggest opposition force, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party \u2013 are critics of New Delhi\u2019s, India will find it easier to work with an elected administration.<\/p>\n \u201cWe cannot carry on like this, and India needs an elected government in Dhaka,\u201d Chakravarty said of the tense ties between the neighbours. \u201cIndia should wait and watch but not disturb the other arrangements, like trade, in goodwill.\u201d<\/p>\n Sreeradha Datta, a professor specialising in South Asian studies at India\u2019s Jindal Global University, said India has been caught in a bind over Hasina but is not blind to the popular resentment against her in Bangladesh.<\/p>\n In an ideal scenario, she said, New Delhi would like to see the Awami League back in power in Bangladesh at some point in the future. \u201cShe [Hasina] is always the best bet forward for India,\u201d Datta told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n But the reality, she said, is that India needs to accept that Bangladesh is unlikely to ever give Hasina another chance. Instead, India needs to build ties with other political forces in Dhaka, Datta said.<\/p>\n \u201cIndia never had a good equation with any of the other stakeholders there. But that has to change now,\u201d Datta said.<\/p>\n \u201cCurrently, we are at a very fragile point in the bilateral relations,\u201d she added. \u201cBut we have to be able to move past this particular agenda [of Hasina\u2019s extradition].\u201d<\/p>\n Even if India and Bangladesh are no longer allies, they need to \u201chave civility towards each other\u201d, Datta said.<\/p>\n Dividends of clinging to Hasina<\/strong><\/p>\n Bangladesh and India share close cultural ties and a 4,000km (2,485-mile) border. India is Bangladesh\u2019s second biggest trading partner after China. In fact, trade between India and Bangladesh has increased in recent months despite the tensions.<\/p>\n But even though India has long insisted that its relationship is with Bangladesh and not with any party or leader in Dhaka, it was been closest with the Awami League.<\/p>\n After a bloody war of independence in 1971, Hasina\u2019s father took power in East Pakistan, renamed Bangladesh, with India\u2019s help. For India, the breakup of Pakistan solved a major strategic and security nightmare by turning its eastern neighbour into a friend.<\/p>\n Hasina\u2019s personal relationship with India also goes back nearly as far.<\/p>\n She first called New Delhi her home 50 years ago after most of her family, including Rahman, was assassinated in a military coup in 1975. Only Hasina and her younger sister, Rehana, survived because they were in Germany.<\/p>\n Indira Gandhi, then India\u2019s premier, offered the orphaned daughters of Rahman asylum. Hasina lived at multiple residences in New Delhi with her husband, MA Wazed; children; and Rehana and even moonlighted at All India Radio\u2019s Bangla service.<\/p>\n After six years in exile, Hasina returned to Bangladesh to lead her father\u2019s party and was elected to the prime minister\u2019s office first in 1996 before her second, longer stint started in 2009.<\/p>\n Under her rule, ties with India flourished, even as she faced domestic criticism over brokering deals with Indian firms seen as unfair for Dhaka.<\/p>\n When she was ousted and felt the need to flee, there was little doubt about where she would seek refuge. Ajit Doval, India\u2019s national security adviser, received her when she landed on the outskirts of New Delhi.<\/p>\n \u201cWe did not invite Hasina this time,\u201d said Chakravarty, who dealt with Hasina\u2019s government briefly in 2009 when he was high commissioner. \u201cA senior official received her naturally because she was the sitting prime minister, and India allowed her to stay because what other option was there?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cCan she go back to Bangladesh, more so now when she is on a death sentence?\u201d he asked, adding, \u201cShe was a friendly person to India, and India has to take a moral stand.\u201d<\/p>\n Michael Kugelman, a South Asia analyst based in Washington, DC, said Hasina\u2019s presence in India would continue to \u201cremain a thorn in the bilateral relationship\u201d going forward but enabled \u201cIndia to stay true to its pledge to remain loyal to its allies\u201d.<\/p>\n However, theoretically, there could be longer term political dividends too for New Delhi, Kugelman argued.<\/p>\n Unlike other analysts, Kugelman said Hasina\u2019s political legacy and the future of her Awami League cannot be written off completely.<\/p>\n Hasina leads an old dynastic party, and a look at South Asia\u2019s political history reveals that dynastic parties \u201cfall on hard times and for quite some time, but they don\u2019t really shrivel up and die\u201d, Kugelman said.<\/p>\n \u201cDynastic parties hang around\u201d in South Asia, he said, and \u201cwith patience, if you live longer to see significant political change, it could create new opportunities for comeback.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n New Delhi, India \u2013 Shima Akhter, 24, was in the middle of football practice when her friend stopped the session to break some news for her: Sheikh Hasina, the fugitive former prime minister of Bangladesh, had been sentenced to death. To the University of Dhaka student, it felt like a moment of vindication. 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\u2018Highly unfriendly act\u2019<\/h2>\n
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\u2018India\u2019s equations need change\u2019<\/h2>\n
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