Sheikh Hasina wants to come home, and this time she put it in writing. On Monday, her lawyers in London wrote to the Bangladesh High Commission in New Delhi and asked for a new passport and a new national ID card, so she can return from exile in India. It is the first formal step of its kind since she fled the country in August 2024, and it is the clearest sign yet that she means what she has been saying: she plans to be back in Bangladesh in December.
The letter itself is simple. Her lawyers at Matrix Chambers wrote to Acting High Commissioner Preeti Rahman and asked that the documents be issued quickly. They pointed out that her old passport and ID card were cancelled by the interim government, and they argued the case on her Bangladeshi nationality and on her rights under international human rights law. Hasina has said she wants to return and surrender before a court.
Let me be honest about what she would be coming back to. A war-crimes court in Dhaka sentenced her to death in her absence last November, for ordering the crackdown on the student protests of 2024. She denies the charges. The United Nations has estimated that as many as 1,400 people may have been killed in that crackdown. Her party, the Awami League, is now banned, and many of her colleagues are in jail or in exile themselves. She ruled Bangladesh for around twenty years. A return is not a homecoming. It is a walk into a courtroom, and possibly into a prison cell.
And Dhaka answered the same day, with a flat no. The government said it does not issue a passport to a terrorist. State Minister for Foreign Affairs Humaiun Kobir put it even more plainly to reporters: she is a fugitive criminal, there is an active extradition treaty with India, and Bangladesh wants her handed over. The BNP’s Ruhul Kabir Rizvi said the same thing from a different angle at the National Press Club on Monday — that there is no scope for her return without answering for the killings of July and August.
So what is really going on here? I read this as a test, not a travel plan. Hasina is asking the new government a legal question in public: does a Bangladeshi citizen still have the right to come home and face a court, even one that has already sentenced her? The government’s answer is also a legal one, just from the other side: you are a fugitive, and fugitives come back in handcuffs through extradition, not on a fresh passport.
The part nobody can answer yet is India’s. New Delhi gave her refuge two years ago and has not handed her over, despite repeated requests. Her passport application puts that question back on the table in a new way. If India helps her travel, it strains relations with Dhaka. If it refuses, she stays where she is. Either way, the decision is now sitting in Delhi as much as in Dhaka.
Here is what I think matters most. Bangladesh has spent two years trying to steady itself after the uprising — a new government, a banned former ruling party, a country still arguing with itself about what happened in the summer of 2024. Hasina coming back would sharpen every one of those arguments. Her supporters still exist, and her return would give them a rallying point. Her opponents see the death sentence as settled justice, and any softening as a betrayal of the dead.
December is only weeks away. Watch what happens next, not what gets said. If the passport is refused and the extradition request stays frozen, she stays in India. If she somehow boards a plane, Bangladesh will have to decide in real time what kind of country it is now — one that lets a former prime minister face her judges in person, or one that keeps her out. That choice will tell us more about where Bangladesh is heading than any speech will.
Source: Dondoo, “Sheikh Hasina applies for new passport ahead of planned return to Bangladesh” (reporting Al Jazeera English coverage of the Reuters exclusive)
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