Hasina's Passport Gambit: A Dead-Letter Request Designed to Keep a Banned Party on Life Support

Ousted Bangladeshi PM Sheikh Hasina seeks a passport she won't receive to stage a return she won't make — a political theater piece aimed at maintaining control over the Awami League from Indian exile.

Sheikh Hasina, the 79-year-old former prime minister of Bangladesh sentenced to death in absentia for crimes against humanity, has requested a new passport and national identity card from the Bangladesh High Commission in New Delhi. Her existing documents were revoked after she fled the country in August 2024 during a student-led uprising that killed more than 1,400 people according to the United Nations. She says she wants to return in December. Nobody credible believes her.

The Dhaka government rejected the request immediately. State Minister for Foreign Affairs Humaiun Kobir told Al Jazeera that "Bangladesh does not give passports to terrorists who kill thousands of people and flee." Prosecutor Md Aminul Islam, who secured the death sentence at the International Crimes Tribunal, stated flatly that "Sheikh Hasina has no option but to face the execution of the verdict." The legal architecture is a steel trap: return means the gallows or life imprisonment. The consensus among analysts — from Dhaka think tanks to retired US diplomats — is that the passport request is a political signal, not a travel plan. Zillur Rahman of the Centre for Governance Studies reads it as Hasina's bid to retain control of the Awami League, the party founded by her father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, now banned with leaders jailed or exiled. "She does not want to hand over the party's leadership to anyone else under any circumstances," Rahman said. Jon F Danilowicz, a former US deputy chief of mission in Dhaka, was blunter: "There is zero chance that Hasina will return to Bangladesh in December. This has all been a bluff intended to rally her supporters and shift the narrative regarding her increasing irrelevance at home." The gambit appears to be working at the base level. An anonymous Awami League organising secretary told Al Jazeera from exile in India that "our leader will return" and that "she will overcome these conspiracies." A Dhaka-based activist said he believes she will come back "no matter what." But when pressed on specifics — how, through what mechanism, with what plan — party figures had nothing. The emotional signal is doing the work; operational detail is beside the point. India sits at the center of the geometry. New Delhi has sheltered Hasina since her flight, and her presence has become a diplomatic irritant between the two countries. Dhaka has sought extradition under a bilateral treaty; India says it is "examining" the requests while wanting to "engage constructively" with the new government. Sreeradha Datta of O P Jindal Global University described India's position as treating Hasina as "a very good friend" it will "always support." But Zillur Rahman offered a sharper read: India cannot release Hasina without signaling to other regional allies that New Delhi abandons its partners. "Its other allies in South Asia and elsewhere may lose trust in New Delhi," he said. India is stuck — hosting Hasina damages the Bangladesh relationship, but extraditing her damages credibility everywhere else. Any accommodation between Hasina's Awami League and Prime Minister Tarique Rahman's governing BNP is a non-starter, according to multiple analysts. Faiz Sobhan of the Bangladesh Enterprise Institute called it precisely that — the BNP's base endured 16-plus years of jailing and harassment under Hasina, and "any hint of a deal would be seen as a betrayal." BNP acting secretary general Ruhul Kabir Rizvi dismissed Hasina publicly: "She is deluding herself if she thinks she can return, reimpose fascism and reclaim her throne." The structural picture is a political actor trying to maintain relevance from exile through symbolic gestures, while the institutions arrayed against her — judicial, diplomatic, political — have foreclosed every formal pathway to return. The only variable is India's calculus, and even that points toward indefinite stasis rather than restoration. Hasina is performing agency she no longer possesses, and the audience that matters most — the Awami League rank and file — may be the only ones still watching.