Is deposed Sheikh Hasina held incommunicado in India?

SALEEM SAMAD

News from Delhi is trickling down that Bangladesh’s former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has been held incommunicado at a safe house in an airforce based near Delhi.

The sources cannot confirm whether she was under house arrest at Hindon Air Base, soon after she fled Bangladesh on 5 August.

However, the sources confirmed that she is confined at the safe house after Bangladesh Chief Advisor Dr Muhammad Yunus of the Interim Government spoke over the phone days a week after the Nobel laureate took oath of office in the first week of August.

Hours of the Yunus-Modi phone conversation all her incommunicado and communication devices were disrupted and she cannot speak to anybody.

Yunus told Indian news agency PTI that Sheikh Hasina, who was toppled after the Monsoon Revolution in August, warned her to shut her mouth and request Delhi bigwigs not to allow her to speak.

Sources said she is not allowed to stroll outside the safe house compound and not permitted to go to a military supershop to buy essentials which is within walking distance.

Her daughter Saima Wazed, who is the Regional Director of the World Health Organisation (WHO) South-East Asia office in New Delhi has not been able to reunite with her mother to embrace her even after she was in exile for a month in the Indian capital.

Saima in posts on Twitter (X) has given several excuses for her tight schedule of a series of regional planning meetings, which was the reason not to hug her mother. Her elder brother Sajeeb Wazed Joy, who lives in Washington DC, soon after her arrival at the Air Force base announced that he would visit Delhi to meet her mother. He also said the meeting would be crucial to understand her future course plan.

Unconfirmed news said that he was asked not to arrive in Delhi, as he was likely not to meet her.

Phones in the safe house are disconnected and she is unable to contact her loved ones. Both her son and daughter are conspicuously silent over Hasina’s incommunicado in India.

Hasina is accompanied by her younger sister Sheikh Rehana, who is a British citizen. She is also stranded with her at the safe house.

Incidentally, her daughter Tulip Rizwana Siddiq is a British Labour Party politician who is presently Britain’s city minister, responsible for overseeing the financial services sector.

Tulip seems to have avoided influencing the British government to intervene in her aunt Hasina’s case and rescue her mother (Rehana) from unofficial confinement. It is unclear whether Rehana has sought counsellor service from the British High Commission in New Delhi.

Meanwhile, Yunus in an indirect threat to Delhi in an interview with PTI categorically said that the Iron Lady (Hasina) should be extradited to Bangladesh and face the music of justice for the deaths of nearly a thousand students and youths during the July massacre.

If deportation is requested to South Block, it would be a slap on Narendra Modi. It is too early to understand how South Block will reverse to damage control mode if they are adamant about keeping the Iron Lady for her safety and security.

First published in the Northeast News, Guwahati, India on 7 August 2024

Saleem Samad is an award-winning independent journalist based in Bangladesh. A media rights defender with the Reporters Without Borders (@RSF_inter). Recipient of Ashoka Fellowship and Hellman-Hammett Award. He could be reached at saleemsamad@hotmail.com; Twitter (X): @saleemsamad