Ousted Bangladeshi PM Sheikh Hasina becomes diplomatic headache for India

But sending the 76-year-old back risks India's standing with its other neighbours in South Asia, where it is waging a fierce battle for influence with China.

Former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina File Photo | AP

NEW DELHI: Four weeks after ex-premier Sheikh Hasina fled Bangladesh by helicopter due to a student-led revolution, analysts say she has become a diplomatic headache for her hosts in India.

Hasina's iron-fisted tenure came to an end last month as protesters marched on her palace in Dhaka after 15 years characterised by rights abuses and opposition crackdowns.

But sending the 76-year-old back risks India's standing with its other neighbours in South Asia, where it is waging a fierce battle for influence with China.

"India is not going to extradite her to Bangladesh," said Thomas Kean of the conflict resolution think-tank International Crisis Group.

'Want a good relationship'

Those who suffered under Hasina in Bangladesh are openly hostile to India for the abuses committed by her government. That hostility has smouldered through megaphone diplomacy waged by Hindu-nationalist Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and directed towards Bangladesh's caretaker administration.

Modi has pledged support for the government that replaced Hasina, led by 84-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus.

But Modi, who has made championing the Hindu faith a key plank of his tenure, has also repeatedly urged Yunus's administration to protect Hindu religious minority in Bangladesh.

Hasina's Awami League was considered to be more protective of Bangladesh's Hindu minority than the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).

Some Bangladeshi Hindus and Hindu temples were targeted in the chaos that followed Hasina's departure in attacks that were condemned by student leaders and the interim government.

Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, a top leader of the BNP, said India had put "all its fruit in one basket" by backing Hasina and did not know how to reverse course.

"The people of Bangladesh want a good relationship with India, but not at the cost of their interests," Alamgir, one of thousands of BNP members arrested during Hasina's tenure, told AFP.

Sheltering the autocrat

Bangladesh's interim government has not publicly raised the issue of Hasina taking refuge in India. Her last official whereabouts is a military airbase near the capital.

The countries have a bilateral extradition treaty first signed in 2013 which would permit her return to face criminal trial.

A clause in the treaty, however, says extradition might be refused if the offence is "political".

India's former ambassador to Bangladesh, Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty, said that the bilateral relationship is too important for Dhaka to sour it by pressing for Hasina's return.