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Bangladesh’s ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina has vowed to return home by year-end, even though she faces a death sentence.
“They may put me in a cell. They may kill me. Anything may happen, but still I have to go,” said the 78-year-old, speaking two years after a student-led uprising toppled her government.
Hasina, who has lived under tight security in India since fleeing Dhaka, said on Wednesday she would return in December – Bangladesh’s “month of victory”, marking the defeat of Pakistani forces in the 1971 war of independence.
“Whatever fate awaits me, I will return to my people,” the former Awami League leader told a news conference at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of South Asia in Delhi, speaking via audio link.
Her son, Sajeeb Wazed Joy, told the news conference she was being treated well in exile.
“She is staying with the full services and security of a head of state,” he said. “Prime minister [Narendra] Modi’s government has shown her the utmost respect, and for that I am eternally grateful.”
India officially distanced itself from the news conference, saying it had no role in organising it and did not endorse the political views expressed.
India has been walking a diplomatic tightrope over Hasina, who was one of Dits closest regional allies. Bilateral ties have deteriorated sharply since her downfall and India has been seeking to mend relations with Bangladesh while resisting demands for her extradition.
Hasina’s flight ended more than 15 years of increasingly authoritarian Awami League rule. The Bangladesh Nationalist party, led by Tarique Rahman, son of former prime minister Khaleda Zia, swept to power earlier this year in an election that barred the Awami League. The government has said Hasina would probably be arrested the moment she set foot in Bangladesh.
Last November, Bangladesh’s international crimes tribunal sentenced her to death in absentia for crimes against humanity over the violent suppression of the protests. The demonstrations began over government-job quotas and snowballed into a mass movement against Hasina’s government.
The UN estimates that as many as 1,400 people may have died. Hasina’s supporters say the death toll was about 800. She has rejected the court’s verdict as politically motivated and said the execution threat would not change her plans.
Hasina was imprisoned several times during her fierce rivalry with Zia, who died in 2025. The two women traded claims of using corruption cases and arrests against each other in a “Battle of the Begums” – an honorific title for a senior woman.
Bangladesh has prohibited domestic media from broadcasting or publishing Hasina’s statements. She has demanded that the ban on the Awami League be lifted, political prisoners be released and “false cases” against party activists be dropped.
Claiming Bangladesh is sinking into lawlessness and economic ruin, she accuses the new government of trying to erase the country’s secular character.
The government has been grappling with high inflation and sluggish economic growth while blaming many of the country’s problems on alleged corruption and mismanagement during Hasina’s years in power.
