New Delhi:
Bangladesh’s former Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, is likely to make her first public appearance in Delhi this week, exactly two years after her ouster from Dhaka. The 78-year-old leader, who has been living in India since a student-led uprising toppled her government on August 5, 2024, is set to address an event at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of South Asia in New Delhi
The event is scheduled from 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM on Wednesday at the Sir Mark Tully Auditorium and will also be live-streamed on the club’s social media platforms.
During her address, the deposed leader is expected to outline her homecoming plans. Her son, Sajeeb Wazed Joy, and the former Education Minister of Bangladesh, Mohibul Hasan Chowdhury Nowfel, are also expected to address the event.
Hasina’s Bangladesh Return Plans
Last year in December, Hasina said she would return to Bangladesh soon, despite a death penalty by a Dhaka court against her. She stressed that she was under no pressure from New Delhi to make the move and can reside in India “with due respect and dignity”.
In an email interview with AFP last week, she claimed that she wants to return to Bangladesh of her own accord.
“I may be killed. I may be arrested. I may be sent to prison. I am fully aware of my fate. Still, I want to go back because my people are calling me,” Hasina said.
Last month, her other interviews suggested she was discussing with her party colleagues her possible return to Bangladesh by the end of this year.
What Awaits Hasina At Home
Hasina is likely to be arrested instantly on her arrival in Bangladesh, before getting opportunities to surrender directly to a court, Bangladesh’s Law Minister M Asaduzzaman said last week.
His comments came a day after Hasina told AFP that she was determined to return to her country by December despite fearing for her life.
Asaduzzaman said Hasina has the right to return, but the “law will take its own course, and we will do nothing violating the law.”
“Despite being a death penalty convict, being a Bangladeshi citizen, if she intends to surrender showing respect to the law by returning home, perhaps she will be arrested before she could do so,” the minister told reporters.
“We will exercise the authority that the law has given us”.
Asked how she could return after her passport was revoked by the interim government that succeeded her, Asaduzzaman said: “It is her problem, not mine.” “(But) whenever she will enter into our territory, I will enforce the authority that the law has reposed upon me,” he said.
The Fall of Hasina in Bangladesh
Hasina’s government was toppled in August 2024 after violent student-led street protests in Bangladesh, following which she fled to India.
An interim government, which took charge after Hasina’s ouster, disbanded her political party, Awami League, under an executive order under an anti-terror law.
In November 2025, Hasina was sentenced to death, in absentia, after being convicted of crimes against humanity by the International Crimes Tribunal for her role in the violent crackdown on the 2024 student-led protests. Hasina has dismissed charges against her as “politically motivated.”
The tribunal was originally formed in 2010 to try collaborators of Pakistani troops during the 1971 Liberation War. The Yunus regime amended its mandate to try the deposed premier by appointing a chief prosecutor who had appeared as the key defence counsel in the collaborators’ cases.
