Dhaka, Bangladesh — New Delhi and Dhaka had been quietly planning Bangladesh Prime Minister Tarique Rahman’s first visit to India since taking office earlier this year, when a news conference shattered those efforts.
Former Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina, convicted of crimes against humanity in her country, addressed a news conference held in the heart of the Indian capital by video on August 5, where she, her son and their Awami League party colleagues criticised the mass uprising that had brought her down.
Bangladesh responded swiftly, saying it was “outraged” that Hasina had been allowed to speak publicly from Indian soil, where she has been in exile since her ouster in August 2024. Dhaka had specifically warned New Delhi against allowing political activities that could affect bilateral relations.
Bangladesh subsequently said a “propitious environment” was needed before the trip, while asking New Delhi to act on extradition requests involving Hasina and other fugitives.
India says the requests remain “under examination” through established procedures.
But interviews with Bangladeshi officials and analysts suggest the immediate dispute may be more nuanced than a simple extradition standoff.
The key question may be less when India hands Hasina over than what India allows her to do while she remains there.
The ‘megaphone’ problem
Faisal Mahmud, a former press minister at the Bangladesh High Commission in New Delhi, said extradition and Hasina’s political activities should be treated as separate issues.
“The stalemate between Bangladesh and India stems largely from New Delhi giving Sheikh Hasina a literal megaphone while she remains in exile there – something Dhaka had specifically asked India not to allow,” Mahmud told Al Jazeera.
Extradition, he said, was “an entirely different matter, and a far more complicated and lengthy one” that the Rahman government understood.
“At this point, the impasse over Tarique’s proposed visit to India, and over any broader reset of the frosty bilateral relationship, is not centred on Hasina’s extradition,” Mahmud said. “It is centred on India allowing her to conduct political activities from its soil.”
That concern predates the government under Rahman’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party.
During an April 4, 2025 meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, then head of Bangladesh’s interim administration, asked New Delhi to prevent Hasina from making what he described as “incendiary statements” from Indian soil.
Humaiun Kobir, deputy head of Bangladesh’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told Al Jazeera that Dhaka wanted “a good and working relationship with India based on trust and mutual respect”.
“But letting terrorists like Sheikh Hasina destabilise our country from India is not acceptable,” Kobir said, using the government’s description of the former prime minister.
He argued that relations could enter “a new phase” if the leadership of both countries wanted it, but said New Delhi must recognise Bangladesh’s changed political reality following the 2024 uprising.
“No one can conduct any terror activity from a sovereign land,” Kobir said. “It is unacceptable that the terrorists who killed our people are allowed to talk from their land and incite violence in Bangladesh.”
He said Dhaka wanted India to return other Bangladeshis accused of crimes, including suspects in the killing of Sharif Osman Hadi, an outspoken critic of Hasina and India who was murdered in 2025. His alleged killers were subsequently arrested by India, where they had crossed over.
Yet Kobir’s comments also suggest Dhaka does not want the Hasina dispute to indefinitely prevent high-level engagement.
Talks over Rahman’s visit remain under way, he said, describing a meeting between the Bangladeshi and Indian prime ministers as ultimately unavoidable. Over the weekend, in fact, India’s Rashtrapati Bhavan — the presidential palace — issued a notice suggesting that it was preparing to host Rahman, only to withdraw the document hours later.
“A meeting is a must,” Kobir told Al Jazeera. “But only when it aligns with our national interest.”
“It can be next week, two weeks later or two months later,” he added.
That distinction matters because restricting Hasina’s political activity and extraditing her present very different challenges for New Delhi.
Hasina was sentenced to death in absentia by Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal after being convicted of crimes against humanity over the deadly crackdown on the 2024 uprising. She rejects the proceedings as politically motivated.
Bangladesh first formally sought Hasina’s extradition on December 23, 2024, through a diplomatic note sent under the countries’ 2013 extradition treaty.
After her death sentence in November 2025, Dhaka reiterated the request, and India subsequently said it was “under examination”.
On August 11, India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said Bangladesh’s request for Sheikh Hasina’s extradition was being examined under India’s “established procedures”, adding that New Delhi would share an update when there was further progress.
The MEA did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for further details on the matter.
Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty, a former Indian high commissioner to Bangladesh, said the matter must proceed through treaty provisions and India’s legal system.
“All legal formalities have to be completed for obtaining a judicial order for extradition,” Chakravarty told Al Jazeera.
He said the treaty also contained grounds under which extradition could be refused.
Domestic politics shapes diplomacy
Some analysts see a political contradiction in the extradition demand.
David Bergman, a veteran observer of Bangladesh politics, argues that Dhaka is pressing India to return Hasina while potentially preferring that she remain outside the country.
“Bangladesh demands extradition knowing that the Indian government will never extradite Hasina,” Bergman told Al Jazeera, adding: “It is apparently playing to the gallery of Bangladesh public opinion.”
“At the same time, the government does not actually want Hasina to return,” Bergman said, referring to a dilemma that other analysts too have pointed to: Hasina’s return could create as many political and legal problems for Dhaka as it resolves.
Bangladesh would have custody of a former prime minister sentenced to death, forcing the government to confront the politically and internationally sensitive consequences of imprisoning, and potentially executing, one of the country’s most consequential political figures.
But the Hasina question is only one part of a broader recalibration of Dhaka’s relationship with New Delhi.
Shahab Enam Khan, professor of international relations at Jahangirnagar University, said Dhaka’s current posture should not be read simply as anti-India. Khan told Al Jazeera that Bangladesh still needs trade, defence, security and people-to-people ties with India.
He said the government’s stance reflects two pressures: asserting Bangladesh’s legal and sovereign authority, and responding to public sentiment shaped by what he described as New Delhi’s close alignment with Hasina’s Awami League over the past two decades.
Khan argued that India had invested heavily in the Awami League as its principal political partner in Bangladesh and had been slow to fully adjust to the country’s post-2024 political reality.
He said New Delhi was now “increasingly embracing the political reality in Bangladesh”, but added that Dhaka needed to see that shift translated into concrete outcomes.
Neither side wants a rupture
The political dispute has not halted practical engagement.
A Confederation of Indian Industry delegation visited Dhaka this month for talks with ministers and business leaders even as uncertainty over Rahman’s proposed India visit intensified. Bilateral merchandise trade remains above $12bn annually, with India exporting $10.56bn worth of goods to Bangladesh, according to the Indian High Commission in Dhaka.
For former Indian High Commissioner Chakravarty, that reflects an unavoidable structural reality.
“Geography is an immutable factor in geopolitics,” he told Al Jazeera. “It binds India and Bangladesh in a manner that cannot be ignored by policymakers in both countries.”
But he criticised Dhaka for attaching conditions to Rahman’s visit.
“I do not think that the larger national interest and bilateral ties should be held hostage to any individual,” Chakravarty said.
Sreeradha Datta, a professor specialising in South Asian studies at India’s OP Jindal Global University, pointed to another dimension of that interdependence: Bangladesh’s attempts to diversify its external relationships have not reduced India’s strategic importance.
She said Dhaka’s expanding engagement with the United States and China, growing defence cooperation with Turkiye and renewed outreach to Pakistan have added to New Delhi’s concerns about Bangladesh’s foreign policy direction.
China has become particularly important, Datta said, with Beijing’s sustained economic and strategic engagement giving it a growing role in Bangladesh’s development and foreign policy calculations.
Even so, she argued, Bangladesh’s broader external partnerships cannot diminish India’s structural importance.
“Neither side can stay disengaged for long,” Datta told Al Jazeera, noting that geography ensures India will remain strategically important to Bangladesh.
The two countries share a 4,096km (2,546-mile) land border.
Datta said Bangladesh also occupies a critical place in India’s eastern connectivity, security and neighbourhood strategy, adding that the relationship is supported by more than 70 bilateral mechanisms.
That structural dependence also helps explain why, despite the political standoff, New Delhi has stopped short of closing the door on high-level engagement.
As recently as August 18, the MEA said Rahman’s invitation remained open, while reiterating that New Delhi wants a “positive, constructive and forward-looking” relationship with Bangladesh based on mutual interest and reciprocity.
The unresolved question is what concession, public or private, could create enough political space for both governments to move towards a meeting without appearing to have backed down.
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