NEW DELHI - Four weeks after ex-premier Sheikh Hasina fled Bangladesh by helicopter during 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. Bangladeshi students who led the uprising are demanding she return from India, her biggest benefactor before her ouster, to be tried for the killing of protesters during the revolt. But sending the 76-year-old back risks undermining India’s standing with its other neighbours in South Asia, where it is waging a fierce battle for influence with China.
“India is clearly not going to want to extradite her back to Bangladesh,” said Thomas Kean of the conflict resolution think-tank International Crisis Group. “The message that would send to other leaders in the region who are close to New Delhi would not be a very positive one... that ultimately, India will not protect you,” he told AFP. Delhi last year saw its preferred presidential candidate in the Maldives lose to a rival that immediately tilted the strategically placed luxury tourism destination towards Beijing. Hasina’s toppling lost India its closest ally in the region. 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 PM Modi and directed towards Bangladesh’s caretaker administration.