A legal process on returning ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who is in India, to Bangladesh is under way, India’s High Commissioner in Dhaka Dinesh Trivedi has said.
“The spokesperson of India’s foreign ministry has repeatedly made India’s position on this clear. The matter is in a legal and structured process, and the courts are also involved. So it is not possible to give any specific timeframe for returning Sheikh Hasina,” he said. He said the same about returning those accused of killing Osman Hadi.
Trivedi was answering journalists’ questions at a session of the Bay of Bengal Conversation 2026 in Dhaka on Saturday (3 October).
On how Hasina came to India, he said she was not taken there by the Indian air force or army but came because of the tragic situation that had arisen in Bangladesh at the time. He said he hoped such a situation, in which innocent people suffer, would never arise anywhere in the world again.
“A military aircraft came to India at that time, and India was not prepared for such a situation either. I was watching television myself, and the scroll said she was going to another country. At that moment she was the prime minister of Bangladesh. So, given the reality, we did not have many options,” he said.
As a neighbour, India’s duty was to accept the reality of the moment, he said, because sometimes situations arise that no country is prepared for. Had India refused to receive her or even to let the aircraft land, it is hard to say where things would have ended up.
That was the historical reality of the time, he said, and the legal process now under way is taking its own course. Just as Bangladesh is a vibrant democracy whose people respect the rule of law and the judiciary, India, as a vibrant democracy, respects its own legal process.
Asked about India’s security, he said: “Bangladesh is an independent and sovereign country and understands its own security better than any other country. There is no reason to tell Bangladesh what it should do. Its government and people have the right to decide on their own interests and security.” There is no question of Bangladesh interfering in India’s security, he said, and India has full confidence in the people of Bangladesh.
Bangladesh’s relationship with India does not depend on its relations with any other country, he said. Whatever relations Bangladesh keeps with other countries, it has the right to protect its people’s interests, and India likewise has the right to protect its own; as good neighbours, what matters is respect for each other’s dignity.
India-Bangladesh relations should not be seen as merely transactional, Trivedi said: they are much broader than that, with deep cultural and historical ties.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report