The video shot from afar shows two suitcases and a woman getting into a car. That was part of the footage from the final hour of Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh. It was on August 5 that the Bangladesh Prime Minister was forced to leave the country and take refuge in India. It is exactly 100 days since Hasina, the ousted PM and chief of the Awami League, has been in India, a stay wrapped in secrecy.
According to several reports, Sheikh Hasina is in Delhi in a high-security area in a bungalow that acts as a safehouse. Security arrangements are foolproof.
Hasina is no stranger to Delhi. She and her sister stayed in the national capital when her father and Bangladesh’s President Mujibur Rahman was assassinated along with other family members in 1975.
Sheikh Hasina and her sister, Sheikh Rehana, who were away holidaying, escaped the bullets of the army officers who were staging a coup.
Hasina, along with her children, husband and sister, lived in Delhi’s Pandara Road under an assumed identity for six years, from 1975 to 1981. She would return to Bangladesh, head a political struggle and become the prime minister.
Sheikh Hasina has thanked India time and again for providing her refuge when she needed it the most.
That was the time that she didn’t know she would be back in India and living a secret life a second time.
Sheikh Hasina’s tenure saw Bangladesh better several socio-economic parameters. Millions were pulled out of poverty, thanks to the booming garment exports.
However, she increasingly began showing dictatorial traits. After returning as the PM in 2009, she kept a tight grip on power through alleged rigged elections. Popular discontent grew, and the US played its part in helping channel that anger.
An anti-quota protest turned into an agitation seeking her removal. Hundreds were killed and Hasina had to take that car, seen in the video, to a waiting helicopter that would bring her to India.
Her first stop in India was the Air Force base at Hindon in Ghaziabad. Just on Delhi’s outskirts. She landed in a C-130J Hercules.
The Indian government extended all the protocols befitting a PM or Head of State to her.
Sources told India Today TV that National Security Guard (NSG) commandos had been deployed for Sheikh Hasina’s security, while IAF’s elite Garud commandos were managing the external security at the Hindon airbase.
That was on August 5.
It wasn’t clear at that time how long Hasina’s stay in India would be. It was reported that she was trying to seek asylum in the UK, where her niece Tulip Siddiq resides.
Hosting Hasina, who was forced out after popular discontent, was a political decision with ramifications. There was already anger against India in a section of Bangladesh’s population, who believed that Hasina survived politically because of India’s support.
But what was believed to be a short stay seems to have continued now for 100 days. And all veiled in secrecy.
After two days, Sheikh Hasina was moved out of Hindon.
The arrangements in Hindon didn’t support a longer stay for high-profile dignitaries like Hasina.
She was transferred to a safehouse in a high-security area in Delhi’s Lutyens’ Bungalow Zone.
The first credible report on Hasina’s Delhi whereabouts was published by The Financial Times of London on September 18.
“With various degrees of credibility, members of India’s chattering classes have privately claimed that the deposed strongwoman is in an Indian government safe house,” reported the Financial Times.
It was learnt that Hasina was with her daughter Saima Wazed Putul, who works with the World Health Organisation (WHO).Putul is the Regional Director of the South-East Asia Region at the WHO’s Delhi Headquarters, a job she landed in February.
Hasina has even been “glimpsed strolling with her entourage around one of the capital’s poshest parks, Lodhi Garden,” the FT reported.
In a report in October, The Print cited unnamed sources and confirmed that Hasina had been living in the Lutyens’ Bungalow Zone for over two months.
This is a high-security area where Members of Parliament and top government officials reside.
“She has a strong security detail, with personnel guarding her round the clock but in plain clothes. As a dignitary, she is receiving this level of protection, a source told The Print.
A core security group looks into whatever movement of Hasina outside the safehouse, the report from October 24 said.
About a week earlier, on October 18, the Bangladesh International Crimes Tribunal issued an arrest warrant against Hasina for involvement in “crimes against humanity” for the violence against protesters.
On November 10, the interim government under Muhammad Yunus said it would seek Interpol’s assistance to get Hasina repatriated from India.
However, pro-Hasina and pro-Donald Trump protests have already started in Dhaka, and the caretaker government are clamping down on them with a heavy hand.
The political situation has changed somewhat with Trump, who criticised the Yunus government over attack on Hindus, being elected the President of the US.
What was expected to be a brief stay has now stretched to 100 days. It remains to be seen how long Sheikh Hasina stays in India in tight security and secrecy. Delhi, as she would never have imagined, is her home again, after four decades.
