India cannot give any deadline for deposed Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s return as her extradition request is under examination through a legal process, Indian High Commissioner in Bangladesh Dinesh Trivedi said on Saturday.
“Nobody can give you a time frame (over Hasina’s return),” Trivedi said at a discussion organised by a private think tank in Dhaka, while responding to questions related to the repeated requests from Dhaka for Hasina’s extradition to Bangladesh.
Hasina, 79, has been living in India after she fled Dhaka following the collapse of her government in August 2024 in the face of a massive anti-government agitation.
India’s external affairs ministry has maintained that the Bangladesh government’s request for extraditing Hasina is being examined in line with established processes.
“Again and again, the government of India has replied to this that there is a process, and the process is legal, and it is well structured,” Trivedi said on Saturday.
He also said Hasina had not been brought to India by the Indian Air Force or Army.
A Bangladesh Air Force aircraft carried Hasina to India on August 5 as the protests, dubbed the July Uprising, toppled her government. The uprising began as protests against a government job-quota system before widening into a broader anti-government movement.
At the time, the Bangladesh Army-led security detachment escorted her from her official residence as protesters moved towards the premises.
“At that point in time, she (Hasina) was still the prime minister of Bangladesh. We had hardly any choice on that. It was our duty as a neighbour to accept the reality of life, because situations are such where at times you are not prepared for it,” Trivedi said.
“What was our choice? If you would have said that no, we are not going to accept, we don’t give landing permission. Things would have been I don’t know what,” he said.
Trivedi said the situation had unfolded because of “tragic circumstances” in Bangladesh and added that such circumstances should never be repeated anywhere in the world.
Bangladesh Prime Minister Tarique Rahman, who gave the opening remarks at the fifth edition of the Bay of Bengal Conversation 2026 on Saturday, was not present when Trivedi made the comments during the panel discussion at the same event.
The remarks were the first explicit comments by Trivedi on the issue of Hasina’s extradition. He had previously declined to comment on matters involving “politics”.
To be sure, Trivedi, a senior BJP leader, is the first political appointee to head India’s High Commission in Dhaka, with previous envoys being career diplomats.
After Hasina’s government was toppled, an interim administration led by Muhammad Yunus assumed office on August 8, 2024, and governed Bangladesh for the next one and a half years.
India-Bangladesh ties witnessed a sharp deterioration during the Yunus-led interim administration, amid tensions over Hasina’s extradition demand, concerns over attacks on minorities, and Dhaka’s deeper engagement with China.
In 2025, Hasina was tried in absentia by a special tribunal and sentenced to death.
The interim government also disbanded her Awami League party and sought her extradition through a diplomatic note.
After coming to power following the February 12 elections, in which the Awami League was barred from contesting, Tarique Rahman’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party government endorsed the ban on Hasina’s party and repeatedly renewed the demand for her extradition.
The extradition issue has continued to strain India-Bangladesh ties and has also affected Rahman’s proposed visit to New Delhi.
India extended an invitation to Rahman to attend the BRICS Summit, which was held last month, while a separate bilateral invitation had been in place since February.
Rahman did not attend the summit or visit New Delhi since taking office.
Bangladesh, however, maintains that it is “positive” about progress in discussions on Rahman’s proposed India visit, though no date has been fixed yet.
A virtual press conference addressed by Hasina from New Delhi on August 5 added to tensions between the neighbouring countries.
Hasina on August 5 declared that she was determined to return home in December to put the country on the “right track”, saying she was undeterred by the threat of imprisonment or a death sentence.
The audio-only virtual press conference was her first public media interaction since fleeing to India. “I know, they may put me in jail or kill me,” she said at the event, adding: “I will go back home to be with my people.”
The Bangladesh foreign ministry subsequently said the process for Rahman’s proposed visit to India had been “vitiated” by Hasina’s virtual press interaction, while India maintained that it had no role in the media event and did not endorse anything said at the forum about the Bangladesh government.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed has said there would be no scope for Hasina to surrender, as she would be arrested immediately upon her return and the court verdict against her would be executed in accordance with the law.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
