“Fear cannot stop me”: Sheikh Hasina rejects “narrative” of her ouster, vows to return to Bangladesh

Former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina used a rare public address on August 5 – the second anniversary of her removal from office – to reject the official account of the 2024 uprising and declare that she intends to go back to Bangladesh, whatever the personal cost. 

 Speaking virtually to a gathering organised by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of South Asia in New Delhi, where she has lived since escaping Dhaka, Hasina said the unrest of July and August 2024 was not a spontaneous student movement but a deliberate attempt to force her elected government from power. “The language of reform was turned into a political instrument. Students were manipulated, violence was used, and the objective was regime change,” she said. 

She defended her government’s response to the protests, arguing that restoring order was the constitutional duty of the security forces, and said a judicial commission set up on July 18, 2024, to examine the violence was never allowed to finish its work after her departure.  

“When police stations are attacked, looting takes place and violence spreads, does the state have no right to restore law and order? That is not a crime; it is the duty entrusted to law enforcement,” she said. 

Hasina, who was sentenced to death in absentia last November by Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal over the crackdown, in which the United Nations estimates up to 1,400 people died, said Awami League members had faced continued persecution and that militants freed since 2024 now posed a security risk. She criticised the economic record of the administration that succeeded her, first under Muhammad Yunus and now under the prime minister, Tarique Rahman, whose Bangladesh Nationalist Party took office after the February 2026 election – a vote the Awami League, banned from contesting, boycotted. 

“I know they may arrest me, put me in jail or even kill me. Fear cannot stop me. I have been arrested several times before,” Hasina said, without giving a date for her return. “My return is not about power. It is about putting Bangladesh back on the path of development and secularism,” she added, saying India remained a friend of the Bangladeshi people regardless of shifts in government-to-government ties. 

Her son, Sajeeb Wazed Joy, who also addressed the event virtually, warned that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence now had free rein in Bangladesh and that released militants threatened regional security. 

Bangladesh’s foreign ministry had urged New Delhi to prevent the deposed prime minister from making political speeches from Indian territory, warning that such statements risk destabilising bilateral relations. 

On Tuesday, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal had stated, “The government has no involvement whatsoever in it and does not endorse any views that may be expressed at the forum.”