DHAKA: Following months-long trial, International Crimes Tribunal, Bangladesh’s domestic war crimes court here, has sentenced ousted PM Sheikh Hasina to death in abstentia on Monday (17th Nov, 2025), for ordering brutal crackdown on students uprising last year.
While citing the extradition treaty signed between Dhaka and New Delhi, Bangladesh asked India to expel former PM and her interior minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal. Sheikh Hasina, who is in exile in India (since August 2024), had earlier called the trial a farce and denied all the charges against her. She said that she was very proud of her government’s record on human rights.
Sheikh Hasina, in her 5-page statement, released after the verdict, condemned the Dhaka court, terming it biased and politically motivated. The ousted PM said she had challenged the BD interim government to bring the charges against her before ICC in the Hague: “I am not afraid to face my accusers in a proper tribunal where the evidence can be weighed and tested fairly.”
It is pertinent to mention here that anti-Sheikh students had also clashed with Awami League student wing leaders. For instance, Shamim Ahmed, enrolled at Jahangirnagar University, was beaten to death in the campus on 18th Sept, last year for leading an attack on student demonstrators at the campus in mid-July. His confrère Abdullah Al-Masud was also beaten by a mob to death on 8th Sept, in Rajshahi.
Forced by the Students Against Discrimination (SAD)’s protests, that claimed 413 lives, 76-year-old Sheikh Hasina called it a day on 5th August, 2024 and resigned from the post of PM before fleeing to India by means of an Army Helicopter.
For 15 years Sheikh Hasina remained perched at the pinnacle (cosily basking under the sunshine of the goodwill of her father since 2009). During her tenure she dealt her opponents with an iron hand. Bangladesh, under her leadership Sheikh transformed its economy and its per capita income is today better than that of India. Yet an enormous number of youngsters are sans employment.
It may be recalled that students took to the streets to protest against reintroduction of civil-service job quota scheme. That reserved more than half of all government jobs for groups including children and grandchildren of the 1971 war ‘heroes’. When 91 protesters died during the agitation, the SCB abolished most of the quota.
But students went back to streets demanding justice for those who were killed during the manifestations. Despite imposition of curfew, they called for Civil Disobedience till the PM resigned. These developments show the determination of Bangladeshi students to get their rights even if it means giving the ultimate sacrifice.
Newspakistan.tv
