DHAKA: Former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina requested a new passport Monday to facilitate her return from exile two years after she was ousted in a mass uprising.
The government has been seeking her extradition from India and earlier dismissed suggestions she needed new identification documents to return home.
Hasina says she wants to return to Bangladesh in December at any cost, despite being sentenced to death over her government’s deadly crackdown on protesters. "If death is my destiny, I would rather die on the soil of my own country, among my own people,” she told The Associated Press last week.
In a letter seen by The Associated Press that was emailed to Bangladesh's diplomatic mission in New Delhi, Hasina's counsel urged the top diplomat to take necessary action to provide her a passport and national identity card.
The letter, sent by London-based law firm Matrix Chambers, asked the mission for the application to be processed "expeditiously” on the basis of Hasina's Bangladeshi nationality and in accordance with "obligations arising under international human rights instruments."
"This is a significant step toward her homecoming. Having had her documents revoked by the previous regime, Her Excellency looks forward to reclaiming her fundamental rights as a Bangladeshi citizen and receiving the necessary documents,” Abu Obaidha Arin, an aide to Hasina, told the AP.
"She is determined to return to Bangladesh by December, and she will undoubtedly return home,” he said.
Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed said the foreign and law ministries were looking into the matter, including whether there was any legal basis for the applications and whether Hasina was legally entitled to apply for the documents, the Dhaka-based English-language New Age daily reported.
On Thursday, Junior Minister for Foreign Affairs Humaiun Kobir said Bangladesh wants Hasina to be handed over under an extradition treaty with India. India has declined to hand her over.
"We want Hasina to be handed over. She will be handed over. She is a terrorist. She is a fugitive. There is an active extradition treaty between Bangladesh and India,” he told reporters in Dhaka.
Bangladesh's military sent Hasina to India after student-led protests forced her from power on Aug. 5, 2024. A special tribunal in 2025 sentenced her to death for crimes against humanity, ruling that she was responsible for ordering the crackdown, which left hundreds of people dead and thousands of others injured.
The United Nations has said nearly 1,400 people were killed. Hasina denies any wrongdoing. She also has rejected the tribunal’s verdict and challenged the legitimacy of the trial.
An interim government, headed by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus, led Bangladesh after Hasina's ouster and held an election in February that Hasina’s Awami League party was barred from contesting.
Tarique Rahman, the son of a longtime archrival of Hasina, came to power in a landslide. - AP
