By Nilova Roy Chaudhury
India will mull over a wide variety of options after it acknowledged that it has noted the verdict and the sentence delivered against Sheikh Hasina, the deposed Prime Minister of Bangladesh, and that it has received a formal request for her extradition.
After a judicial tribunal in Dhaka pronounced former Bangladesh Premier Hasina guilty of committing “crimes against humanity” and sentenced her to death, in absentia, on November 17, the Indian government received a formal request from the Bangladesh interim government seeking her extradition to that country, under terms of the India – Bangladesh bilateral extradition treaty, signed in January 2013. New Delhi is examining the request, the second such formal ‘note verbale’ from Dhaka since Hasina had to flee from Bangladesh on August 5 last year, and is considering all the legal implications of the request. “Yes, we have received the request and this request is being examined as part of ongoing judicial and internal legal processes,” India’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Randhir Jaiswal said, adding India had “noted the verdict.”
India is not in any hurry to act on the matter, not only because Sheikh Hasina has been an invaluable and long standing friend of India, but also because she sought and was provided shelter in this country as a friend and a democratically elected political party head and Prime Minister, not a criminal. Additionally, there are a variety of legal implications which New Delhi will take into account, including, primarily, the interim nature of the current Bangladesh government and whether the constitution of the ICT itself would bear international legal scrutiny. Only once the validity of the hurriedly convened judicial process in Dhaka is established would the Indian government be legally obligated to act. Those formal legal processes, prior to the actual process of extradition, would provide Sheikh Hasina a chance to present her defence against the charges, something she could not do in the just concluded ICT trial in Dhaka in which she and former Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal were charged, tried and sentenced to death. The third person accused in the case, former Inspector General of Police (IGP) Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun, turned approver and was given five years in prison.
“We remain committed to the best interests of the people of Bangladesh, including peace, democracy, inclusion and stability in that country, and will continue to engage constructively in this regard with all stakeholders,” Jaiswal added, attempting to diplomatically defuse any unpleasant exchanges between the neighbours especially after the Bangladesh Foreign Ministry, in a post on X, had said, “If any country gives shelter to these individuals convicted of crimes against humanity, it will be an extremely unfriendly act and an affront to justice.”
The decision of the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) has seen considerable turmoil inside Bangladesh, with violence erupting between those supporting the judgement, including the religious fundamentalists and the BNP and those, like supporters of the Awami League, opposing it, claiming the judgement was flawed. The judgement will further worsen the difficult law and order situation prevailing in that country.
It is ironic that the ICT was formed by Sheikh Hasina in March, 2010, shortly after her electoral victory, to try those accused of committing War Crimes in 1971. The tribunal on November 17 also ordered the confiscation of all properties belonging to Hasina and Asaduzzaman in favour of the state. Another aspect of the situation which India will be watching closely is what happens to the petition that Sheikh Hasina herself filed in October with the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, in which she accused the Mohammad Yunus-led interim government of Bangladesh of having committed crimes against humanity.
Through her lawyer, Steven Powles KC of Doughty Street Chambers, London, Hasina filed an Article 15 Communication with the Prosecutor of the ICC, requesting that the Prosecutor initiate an investigation into retaliatory violence committed against members and office-bearers of the Awami League party and members of the previous Cabinet and government.
If the ICC initiates an investigation based on the petition, which was filed well before the verdict of the ICT was delivered, it will bolster Hasina’s defence and could prove to be an embarrassment for the Yunus government. In the petition Hasina claimed that the crimes committed by the Interim Government after the protests in Bangladesh, which resulted in her being forced to flee the country in August 2024, amount to crimes within the ICC’s jurisdiction. The communication highlights the alleged killing of 400 Awami League leaders and activists since July 2024, many of them beaten or lynched by violent mobs.
Bangladesh ratified the Rome Statute of the ICC on 23rd March 2010 and the statute entered into force for Bangladesh on 1st June 2010. India, however, has not signed or ratified the Rome Statute of the ICC because of several concerns, including over State sovereignty, the powers of the UN Security Council and the exclusion of use of nuclear weapons from the list of war crimes.
The Yunus-led interim government banned the Awami League party on May 10, 2025 and, when it announced that elections would be held in 2026, stated that the political party would not be not permitted to participate in the scheduled national elections for the Jatiya Sangsad (parliament) due in February 2026. The Awami League, its supporters and civil society organisations have opposed the ban, which they claim will lead to a flawed democratic process. India has also urged the widest participation for the polling process to be fair.
The ICT verdict, while not entirely unexpected, will further strain the already difficult nature of bilateral relations between India and Bangladesh since the political turmoil forced Sheikh Hasina to leave Dhaka last August.
For the people of Bangladesh, their conflicted internal struggle for identity, whether to be primarily Islamist and fundamentalist or whether to be primarily Bengali and secular and the idea for which their nation was created, will continue.
