Toppled Bangladesh leader Sheikh Hasina to speak today: What we can expect

Published 5 August 2026 · local

The former Bangladeshi prime minister is likely to announce her return from exile in India, despite facing the death penalty. Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina

The former Bangladeshi prime minister is likely to announce her return from exile in India, despite facing the death penalty. Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who was dramatically ousted following a brutal crackdown on protesters in 2024 and fled to India, is expected to make a rare public appearance after two years in exile in New Delhi on Wednesday. Two years after the events of the summer of 2024, which saw an uprising by young people protesting against a reservation system for government jobs turn violent, the 78-year-old is due to appear via videolink at an event hosted by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club (FCC) of South Asia, alongside her son, Sajeeb Wazed Joy, and other Awami League leaders, including former Education Minister Mohibul Hasan Chowdhury Nowfel. Dhaka continues to seek Hasina’s extradition from India following last year’s death sentence passed against her in absentia for ordering forces to fire on protesters. New Delhi, which has allowed her to remain and resisted attempts to extradite her to Bangladesh, has denied any role in planning the virtual speech, saying the event has been organised by a private media organisation. On Tuesday, Bangladeshi authorities banned local media from airing her speech. Hasina’s aide, Abu Obaidha Arin, slammed the move, saying Dhaka’s “efforts to silence dissent cannot extinguish voices” beyond the country’s borders. Why is Sheikh Hasina in exile? Hasina has been living in self-imposed exile in New Delhi since student-led ⁠protests toppled her Awami League government in August 2024. A caretaker government took over after she fled, before elections were held earlier this year. She was accused of ordering security forces to crack down brutally on protesters, including telling officers to “shoot them“, and was sentenced to death in absentia in 2025 for crimes against humanity, a verdict she has dismissed as “legally void”. An estimated 1,400 people were killed during the crackdown, and more than 20,000 were injured. Bangladesh’s interim government had called for the death penalty in relation to that, as well as for 1,500 cases of enforced disappearances during her 17-year rule, according to an official inquiry.

Many of those detained were political rivals from the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Jamaat-e-Islami. How has Bangladesh responded to Hasina’s plans to speak? The government has banned Bangladeshi media from broadcasting her speech. In January, Hasina made an audio address which was played to a packed FCC in New Delhi. In it, she accused Muhammad Yunus, the head of Bangladesh’s then-interim government, of being a “murderous fascist” and said Bangladesh would “never experience free and fair elections” under him. More than 100,000 people listened to the address, which was broadcast online. Bangladesh’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it was “surprised and shocked” that she had been allowed to make the speech from India. “Allowing the event to take place in the Indian capital and letting mass murderer Hasina openly deliver her hate speech … constitute a clear affront to the people and the Government of Bangladesh,” the ministry said in a statement on Sunday about the address – Hasina’s first since she was ousted. The Foreign Ministry’s statement added that Hasina had “openly called for the removal” of the interim government and issued “blatant incitements to her party loyalists and the general public to carry out acts of terror” to derail the elections, which were held on February 12 this year. With Hasina in exile in India, hundreds of families who lost loved ones in the protests have been left wondering if the deposed prime minister will face justice. Among them is Shaina Begum, the mother of 20-year-old student Sajjat Hosen Sojal, who was shot and his body burned by the police hours before the student-led uprising forced Hasina to resign and flee the country. “I cannot be calm until she [Hasina] is brought back and hanged in this country,” she told Al Jazeera after the former leader’s death sentence was announced. What is Hasina expected to say in her speech? Hasina’s speech will mark two years of her government’s fall on August 5, 2024, when she fled to India by helicopter.