As India’s eastern neighbour Myanmar, which shares its border with a number of north-eastern states, has witnessed a civil war for the last several years. Another bordering nation, Bangladesh, is experiencing a socio-political turmoil for many months directly impacting the region. As the Muslim majority South Asian is surrounded by India’s 4,096 kilometre border, where Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram cumulatively share 1,879 kilometre, the mayhem that surfaces there must have a reflection in various sectors of northeast India. Regular trades between Bangladesh and India have been affected, where the flow of tourists between the two neighbouring nations has been halted since the change of regime in Dhaka last year.

The political situation of Bangladesh continues to be grim as the current interim government, led by Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus, is bent upon taking legal actions against the ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who is incidentally taking shelter in India. A recent UN report describing the horrific picture of atrocities on agitating students and common Bangladeshi nationals by the then Awami League-led government in Dhaka has simply empowered the caretaker government in Dhaka to raise voices for her repatriation. Lately, Prof Yunus visited some secret prisons in the capital city, which were used by Hasina to terrorise the opponents during her consecutive 15-year-long tenure, to get more arguments for pursuing punishment for the ousted lady premier and many of her associates. The interim administration, which was formed following Hasina’s escape on 5 August 2024 to take an urgent refuge in India, recently urged New Delhi to hand over Hasina to face hundreds of criminal cases in her home country. In a recent media interview, Prof Yunus asserted that Hasina must be brought back to justice, otherwise the people of Bangladesh will not forgive the caretaker government.

Advertisement

It may be mentioned that the UN Human Rights office sent a probing team to Bangladesh following the request of the interim government chief, Prof Yunus, in September to conduct an independent and impartial fact-finding inquiry into the alleged human rights violations and abuses during the deadly events that took place between 1 July and 15 August 2024. The team’s report, published in Geneva on 12 February 2025, indicated that the Hasina government’s various machineries, along with violent elements linked to the Awami League, systematically engaged in a range of serious human rights violations during the nationwide protests. “The security and intelligence services of Bangladesh’s former government killed as many as 1,400 people, where 12 to 13 per cent were children and arbitrarily arrested or detained more than 11,700 others during the student-led protests,” said the UN report.

The UN investigating team revealed that over 75 per cent of the victims died from gunfire and 60 per cent of them were shot with weapons meant for war. Senior official testimony indicated that Hasina herself directed the security forces to ‘kill protesters and hide their bodies’ to quell the agitation. The report also provided a number of recommendations to reform the security agencies and abolish a host of repressive laws as well as for implementing broader changes to the political system and economic governance in the 170 million nation. A large number of Hindus, Ahmadiyya Muslims and indigenous people from the Chittagong hill tracts also faced rights violations. Some 100 arrests in relation to attacks on distinct religious and indigenous groups were made, but many perpetrators of violence enjoyed impunity.

Welcoming the report, Prof Yunus observed that it has documented all killings, disappearances and torture of the agitating students. The octogenarian banker-turned-caretaker regime chief asserted that all those involved in crimes against the Bangla population in the last one and a half decades would be punished under the law. Sharing his firsthand experience of visiting some secret prisons (popularly known as Aynaghar) recently, Prof Yunus termed those houses as torture cells. In these notorious Aynaghars established in different parts of the country, political opponents were subjected to inhumane atrocities following the direction of septuagenarian Hasina to suppress dissenting voices. Terming Aynaghars as horrific, Prof Yunus lamented that unusual cruelty took place there where the victims were deprived of basic minimum rights.

The Yunus administration recently sent a diplomatic note to New Delhi in December asking for Hasina’s extradition. Dhaka, after revoking the passports of Hasina and over 90 others accusing their involvement in enforced disappearances and the last July-August killings, recently sent necessary documents to New Delhi for her early repatriation under the prisoner exchange agreement between the two nations. As New Delhi is yet to entertain the request, the Yunus regime now thinks of seeking an international intervention if the process takes a very long period. Days back, the country’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) also issued arrest warrants for Hasina and several others, accusing them of crimes against humanity and genocide under their direct influence. Originally formed by Hasina to try the pro-Pakistani elements against the 1971 Liberation War, the ICT has now been used against the daughter of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman by the current administration.

Amid all political developments, the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is visiting Bangladesh on 13 to 16 March following the invitation from Prof Yunus. The UN chief had already committed to garner support for the Rohingya people, who are taking shelter primarily in Cox’s Bazar of south Bangladesh after being forcefully displaced from Arakan (Rakhine) State of Myanmar. Guterres, who is coming to Bangladesh for the second time (first in 2018, soon after taking the UN responsibility), earlier stated that he shared Prof Yunus’s concern over the impact of the Rohingya crisis on Bangladesh and the entire region.

Adding more excitement to the political circus in the country, a new political party surfaced under the leadership of agitating students and young people, who dethroned Hasina, to contest in the forthcoming polls, probably by the end of this year. Named as Jatiya Nagorik Party (National Citizens’ Party), it was launched on 28 February in Dhaka. Nahid Islam, who recently resigned from the interim government, took the responsibility as its convener. As the Awami League workers are facing difficulties in regrouping, the prime opposition, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, is understood to be in a better position. The emergence of JNP may change the electoral politics of Bangladesh in the coming days.

The recent outburst of Bangladesh’s military chief Waker-Uz-Zaman, where he criticized various stakeholders for their infightings, received huge international media attention. Some political analysts even termed Waker’s statement as a threatening call to the interim government, even though he publicly said that Prof Yunus was doing the best to keep everyone united. The army chief insisted on conducting a free, fair and comprehensive election by this year after necessary administrative and democratic reforms in Bangladesh. He expressed worries about deteriorating law and order situations in the country, where the criminals were enjoying impunity from the concerned government agencies.

Meanwhile, a New Delhi-based human rights body demands a fair probe into the current state of governance in Bangladesh as the interim government completes six months of its existence. Highlighting rights violations, including the weaponization of the justice system against political opponents in Bangladesh, the Rights and Risks Analysis Group (RRAG) asserted that the current administration continues cracking down on the media to hide the incidents of increasing attacks on religious minorities and indigenous peoples. A total of 348 journalists were targeted, including the filing of 21 criminal cases against 147, a money laundering investigation against 34 journalists and the denial of accreditation to 167 scribes. The current regime continues to use the draconian Cyber Security Act of 2023, under which 24 persons were arrested in 34 cases during 2024, stated the RRAG.

Lately, however, some Indian citizens also voiced sending Hasina back home and urged the central government to do the needful respecting the extradition treaty signed in 2013 and amended in 2016 between India and Bangladesh. They also raised demands to deport millions of illegal Bangladeshis and Rohingya immigrants who are taking shelter in India. A leader of Shiv Sena (Uddhav Thackeray faction) even asked New Delhi to acquire inspiration from the US government in Washington DC to deport all illegal nationals from India (including Hasina). Many pointed out that Hasina should not be entertained with a permanent asylum because her presence and occasional outbursts will only deteriorate the Indo-Bangla relations in the days to come. Nonetheless, one may recount that not a single nation across the globe came forward appreciating New Delhi for giving shelter to Hasina (not to speak of offering asylum to the deposed leader) to date.

The writer is a Guwahati-based special representative of The Statesman