“India does not want to hand over Sheikh Hasina to Bangladesh.” Think Tank International Crisis Group
Khalid Latif Balouch
London: Bangladeshi students who led the uprising are demanding that Sheikh Hasina return from India to face trial for the killing of protesters during the uprising.
But extraditing the 76-year-old Bangladeshi leader risks weakening India’s ties with its other neighbors in South Asia, where it is fighting to reduce China’s influence.
“India does not want to hand her (Sheikh Hasina) over to Bangladesh,” says Thomas Kane of the think tank International Crisis Group.
This, he said, is because doing so “will not send a positive message to countries that are close to New Delhi. Because they may think that India will not protect you at the end of the day.”
New Delhi last year saw its favorite presidential candidate lose to a rival in the Maldives, who turned the strategically important country towards Beijing as soon as he took power.
In Bangladesh, the people who had to face hardships and abuses during Hasina’s rule are openly hostile to India.
Hindu nationalist Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s megaphone diplomacy has further fueled this animosity.
Modi has pledged support for the interim government to replace Hasina, led by 84-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus.
But Modi, whose many initiatives have made him a champion of nationalist Hindus, also repeatedly urged the Yunus administration to protect Bangladesh’s Hindu religious minority.
Hasina’s Awami League is considered more protective of Bangladesh’s Hindu minority than Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).
During his traditional Independence Day address from the Mughal-era Red Fort, Modi tried to convey that Bangladeshi Hindus were under threat and later raised the issue with US President Joe Biden.
