CITIZENS are still in the dark about the legal status of the deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who resigned on August 5 amidst a student-led mass uprising and fled to India, ending 15 years of the authoritarian regime of the Awami League. In efforts to cling to power, she deployed armed party people and employed law enforcement agencies in July鈥揂ugust to quell the protests and the consequent unrest in a violent manner that left about 500 people dead and several thousand wounded. Whilst she has been responsible, as head of the government, for all the mayhem and the murders that took place during the protests, she has already been accused in a murder case filed with the Mohammadpur police in Dhaka. She was, meanwhile, supposed to be arrested after she had resigned and to be tried in keeping with the law. Yet, she was given a safe passage out of Bangladesh to India, where she is reported to be staying, and Bangladesh authorities are learnt not to have so far taken any move to bring her back to Bangladesh and put her on trial, or to write to New Delhi seeking to know her legal status there or even to investigate why she had been given a safe passage and had not, instead, been arrested.
Whilst Dhaka should immediately write to New Delhi seeking to know the legal status of Bangladesh鈥檚 deposed prime minister in India, Indian authorities should on their own also make a public statement on Sheikh Hasina. In a surprising development, meanwhile, India鈥檚 prime minister Narendra Modi, as India鈥檚 television channel NDTV has reported, on August 15 said that 1.4 billion Indians were worried about the safety of the Hindus in Bangladesh during 鈥榯he political unrest鈥� here. Some attacks on the Hindus mostly involved in Awami League politics took place in Bangladesh soon after the downfall of the Awami League, which left a political vacuum for a while, but the Muslims, and even madrassa people who Indian authorities like to believe are religious extremists, guarded the Hindus and their establishments. The initial attacks have also been successfully contained. And, whatever attacks that happened were hardly sectarian. There is, therefore, no reason for Narendra Modi and its government to worry about Hindus in Bangladesh and the Hindus living there should stop running such a smear campaign against Bangladesh. Such a statement of Modi is also ludicrous as Modi and his government have not only denied religious minorities there equality in treatment but also enacted laws against religious minorities. Such a statement also suggests that the Hindu nationalist Modi and his government are ready to shoulder the responsibility for all the Hindus living anywhere in the world. If they are so, it would, rather, be a political disservice to all the Hindus living outside India.
The interim government of Bangladesh must, therefore, investigate why and how Sheikh Hasina was given a safe passage and was not, instead, arrested for trial, make a public statement on the legal status of Hasina in Bangladesh and seek to know her legal status in India, where she has been staying since August 5, and make it public and bring her back to Bangladesh.