Staff Correspondent

Will she or will she not? That seems to be the question in a lot of people’s minds these days. Will Sheikh Hasina return in December, or will she not?

For Awami League stalwarts, there is no doubt about it. They fully expect her to return in or even before December and face jail. For the government, however, voluntary return seems to be out of the question. According to the government spokesman, extradition followed by hanging is the only path open to Hasina.

For observers watching from the sidelines, there is plenty of room for doubt. For some, Hasina may well return but certain conditions would have to be met first, such as negotiations with the government to ensure security and right of appeal.

For others, the threat of immediate hanging without a right of appeal sounds less like a credible legal path, and more like a ploy to deter Hasina from attempting to return.

For Hasina herself though, the prospect of assassination or hanging in jail do not seem far-fetched.

“I am thinking I might even be killed when I land,” Hasina said during a telephone interview with the Bangla-language Indian news site The Wall.

“Extremists don’t think about anything. They could kill me, or take me to jail, torture me or hang me. They could do that. But I have to take this risk for the sake of the welfare and interest of the people. Somebody has to stand beside the people who are suffering,” Hasina said.

This is a precarious place to be standing, when so much is at stake. Bangladesh has irrevocably pinned Hasina’s fate to future relations with its neighbour India.

But it’s not only relations with India that are at stake. What to do with Hasina and, by extension, the future status of the Awami League, is intertwined with the country’s stability and economic well-being.

It seems rather extraordinary that a government has bet the nation’s future on how to hang a former leader. Not whether or not to, but how. Whether she would fly-in on her own, or in handcuffs accompanied by law enforcement.

The road to this rather incredible state of affairs was precipitated by an announcement made in an interview.

Reuters Triggers the Debate

The speculation over “would she or would she not return” began back in July when the former prime minister told Reuters that she and some of her party leaders in exile planned to return to Bangladesh “around December”.

The discussion on what she might do took on a frenzied tempo in August when she told a gathering of journalists at Delhi’s Foreign Correspondents Club that she would definitely return, although she gave no specific date. Her son, Sajeeb Wazed added that she wanted to return, “regardless of what the Bangladesh government wants”.

The Bangladesh government took a huge exception to Hasina’s speech at the FCC which triggered a flurry of diplomatic activities between Dhaka and Delhi.

During the parleys with Indian officials that followed, Bangladesh made plain what they wanted: extradition of Hasina, not voluntary return; and an end to her political speeches and interviews while in Delhi.

The debate has taken a new twist since Hasina’s most recent interview with the Bangla-language Indian news portal The Wall. This was probably the first time a whole interview was released in audio, which came in the middle of the mega spat between Dhaka and Delhi over Hasina’s political speeches to journalists.

Since 2024, people have only heard Hasina delivering monologues, either recorded or live, on social platforms. The Wall’s interview is the first time a full-scale question and answer session has been heard.

During the Wall interview Hasina once again emphasised her plans to return to Bangladesh in December. She did clarify that she would not “instruct” other party leaders to return with her, since everyone would be at risk of harm.

From Yunus to Tarique Rahman

The government’s attitude seems to have evolved over time, giving rise to suspicion of indecision and confusion. Under Yunus, Hasina’s presence in India was marketed as the key reason why bilateral relations had taken a nose-dive. The interim regime was quite vocal in demanding that she be sent back to face trial.

In reality though, Yunus took very little concrete steps to facilitate her return. The Hasina issue served the domestic, anti-India agenda more than anything else.

The current BNP government started off on a different footing. The call for extradition -- following Hasina’s death sentence given by the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) last year -- was now coupled with talk of the former prime minister being “irrelevant”.

However, Hasina’s alleged “irrelevance” did not mean the government was not super-sensitive to anything she said.

It now seems the government has coupled the demand for extradition with a demand to silence her “political speech”. Improvement of bilateral ties including an official visit to Delhi by prime minister Tarique Rahman has been made conditional on the delivery of these demands.

The government seems to be also flip-flopping on the consequences of Hasina’s voluntary return. Back in July, the government spokesman Zahed Ur Rahman insisted Hasina would be ensured full security and her legal rights would also be protected. He had made similar statements prior to the Aug 5 event at the FCC.

But more recently, the government seems to have switched on the “death mode”.

First the chief prosecutor of the ICT Aminul Islam said the sentence of the court -- death -- would be implemented as soon as Hasina returned, as she would not have the right to appeal. The time limit for her to file for appeal has passed, Islam said.

Death Awaits Hasina

Zahed has now picked up the same song sheet, and added more noise to it. He is now talking about dragging Hasina back from Delhi.

“She doesn’t have to come, we want to forcibly bring her here. The death sentence is waiting for her here,” Zahed told his regular press briefing on Sept 8.

He repeated the chief prosecutor’s words to suggest there would be no scope for appeal. Only the death sentence remained to be carried out.

In short, Hasina’s voluntary return, even to face her fate, won’t be enough for the government. It would have to be extradition, by which she would be brought back by Bangladesh under detention. This desire assumes that the government of India, which has treated Hasina as a state guest for the past two years, would do a volte-face.

This apparently “tough” stance raises a question: If hanging Hasina is the ultimate desire of the Tarique government, then surely that could be done with her voluntary return in December?

For whatever reason, a voluntary return does not seem appealing for the government. They would prefer to continue to demand her extradition, knowing well that the Indian government would either flatly reject it, or most likely drag the issue out in their legal system.

A rigid demand for extradition would practically ensure Hasina would remain in India for the foreseeable future.

Fear of Awami League

In short, the government does not appear serious even in its threat to hang Sheikh Hasina. One can only conclude that the government’s principal goal is to keep Hasina away, and preferably mute.

The government seems ready to sacrifice relations with India to pursue that goal, possibly because Delhi is not seen as a foreign policy priority any longer. There is already a feeling in pro-regime circles that a closer relationship with China and the US has given Dhaka enough leverage to balance the overwhelming Indian presence along its borders.

Dhaka’s desperate overtures to Saudi Arabia to allow Bangladesh to join the Makkah Defence Pact is designed to add further meat to that perceived -- but by no means tested, let alone proven -- leverage.

The BNP possibly sees this tough policy on Hasina and India delivering dividends on the domestic front as well. A continued ban on the Awami League’s activities would help BNP keep their electoral advantage intact and crucially, keep their allies Jamaat-e-Islami and NCP in good humour.

The recent “long march” and other protests by the Jamaat-NCP combo were most likely designed to maintain pressure on the BNP to not relent on the Awami League issue. Hasina’s return to Dhaka, even as a prisoner facing the hangman, would make it difficult if not impossible to prevent a resurgence of the Awami League.