Why is India protecting Bangladesh’s Iron lady Hasina?

Why is India protecting Bangladesh’s Iron lady Hasina?

Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) sentenced former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to be hanged for crimes against humanity, prompting cheers in the packed courtroom as the judge read out the verdict on Monday.

Hasina, 78, had defied the tribunal’s order to return from India and attend her trial. The case against Hasina then proceeded “in absentia” (without the defendant present), with the judges ultimately finding her guilty of the deadly crackdown against a student-led uprising last year.

“All the… elements constituting crimes against humanity have been fulfilled,” Judge Golam Mortuza Mozumder read to the Dhaka-based tribunal.

The former leader of Bangladesh was found guilty on three counts: incitement, order to kill, and inaction to prevent the atrocities, the judge said.

“We have decided to inflict her with only one sentence — that is, sentence of death,” he added.

According to UN investigators, up to 1,400 people may have been killed in the violent repression of mass protests.

Hasina says verdict against her as ‘foregone conclusion’

Former Interior Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal was also sentenced to death in absentia after being found guilty on four counts of crimes against humanity.

Hasina, who was assigned a state-appointed lawyer for the trial, called the verdict “biased and politically motivated” in a statement issued from her refuge in India.

The tribunal’s “guilty verdict against me was a foregone conclusion,” Hasina said.

Awami League denounces it as ‘scripted and staged’

The special tribunal was initially formed in 2009 to investigate crimes carried out during Bangladesh’s war for independence in 1971 against Pakistan. Now, it is looking into actions taken by Hasina’s Awami League (AL) party and its leaders during last year’s uprising.

Both Hasina and the AL have dismissed the ICT as a “kangaroo court” after it started looking into AL leaders.

“It was all predetermined,” Mohammad A. Arafat, a central leader of AL in hiding, told DW following the death sentence against Hasina. “Everything you saw (…) while delivering the judgment was carefully scripted and staged in front of everyone,” he added.

Amnesty International slams the trial

The interim government led by Nobel Peace laureate Muhammad Yunus praised the verdict, with Yunus saying it showed that “no one, regardless of power, is above the law.”

“Months of testimony detailed how lethal force, even from helicopters, was used against unarmed protesters,” Yunus said in a statement.

The UN, however, struck a more cautious note, saying that the verdict was an “important moment for victims” but also saying its officials were not “privy to the conduct” of the trial against Hasina and expressing regret over the imposition of the death penalty, saying they oppose it “in all circumstances.”

International watchdog Amnesty International went a step further, decrying the trial as “neither fair nor just” while also decrying the death penalty as “the ultimate cruel, degrading and inhuman punishment and has no place in any justice process.”

Intercepted conversations used against Hasina. Dhaka-based investigative journalist David Bergman, who has been covering the ICT closely since its formation, thinks no one was surprised by the conviction announced on Monday.

“Apart from the political environment which demanded this, there was significant evidence pointing towards Hasina’s culpability for the offence of crimes against humanity — intercept conversations and the evidence of the Inspector General of the Police, for example — so a conviction was a reasonable outcome,” he told WTX News.

“However, putting the evidence to one side, the in absentia process, with a poor court-appointed defence lawyer, means that the trial process was extremely one-sided and the prosecution’s evidence was not properly tested,” he added.

India unlikely to extradite ousted Bangladesh leader

After the verdict, the Bangladeshi Foreign Ministry once again called on India to extradite Hasina. New Delhi commented that it noted the verdict, was committed to the best interests of the people of Bangladesh and would “engage constructively,” without going into more detail.

Observers think it is highly unlikely that India will accept its neighbour’s extradition request.  

“Ensuring accountability was essential for the country to begin moving forward — particularly for the families of those killed or injured during the July uprising. Strategically, however, the imposition of the death penalty may have reduced whatever limited possibility existed of securing India’s cooperation in extraditing Hasina,” Rashna Imam, a senior advocate at the Supreme Court of Bangladesh.

“It is equally arguable that, irrespective of the sentence, India was unlikely to extradite Hasina under the current geopolitical conditions,” the Dhaka-based barrister added.

Bergman believes that the verdict carries a symbolic weight for Bangladesh’s interim government and Chief Advisor Yunus, who had pledged to ensure justice for victims of last year’s crackdown.

“But because Hasina is out of the country and so the sentence can’t be implemented, I don’t think it will have much other immediate import. However, it is unclear how the verdict will inform how future governments deal with the Awami League,” Bergman said.

No chance for AL to stage a political comeback?

Bangladesh plans to conduct a national election in the first half of February next year. While Hasina’s Awami League dominated the political life of the country for decades, the interim government suspended all of the party’s activities in May 2025 and recently declared that the AL had been removed from “the official list of registered political parties” by the country’s electoral commission.

With the party locked out of the upcoming election, and its top leaders in hiding or in jail, political observers agree its prospects are grim.

“Banning perpetrators of massive human rights violations and potential crimes against humanity from running will be important so as not to delegitimise the election process. However, the AL has deep historical roots and still enjoys support among considerable sections of the population. So banning the party as a whole is unlikely to be helpful,” Jasmin Lorch, senior researcher at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS), told WTX.

“The AL would be well advised to replace its leadership with people who were not implicated in the 2024 crackdown and to publicly apologise for the human rights violations committed both in summer 2024 and, more generally, during the entire AL’s tenure,” Lorch said, adding: “However, the problem is that the AL is very dynastic and hierarchical, making it very difficult for the party to reform itself.”

Senior AL leader Mohammad A. Arafat, who served as the information minister during last year’s crackdown and is now himself facing charges, declined to comment about any probable changes in his party’s leadership.

“AL will fight back and will look for a political solution with the support of the people,” he told DW, without elaborating further.