Ousted Bangladeshi leader applies for new passport to return home

Former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who has lived in self-imposed exile in India since leaving the country in 2024, submitted a request on Monday for a new passport and national identity card so that she can return home. It is the first formal contact of its kind from her office since she fled.

Lawyers from Matrix Chambers, a London-based law firm, wrote to Bangladesh's acting high commissioner in New Delhi, Preeti Rahman, asking that new documents be issued promptly. They argued the interim government's cancellation of her passport and identity card violates her rights as a Bangladeshi citizen and the country's obligations under international human rights instruments. The request is seen as the clearest signal yet that she intends to act on her plan to return in December.

Bangladesh's war-crimes tribunal sentenced Hasina to death in absentia last November over the alleged order to violently suppress the student-led uprising of 2024, charges she has repeatedly denied from exile. She has previously said she intends to return and surrender to the courts, and her aides said on Monday that a return date will be announced once the necessary formalities are complete. "If death is my fate, I want to die on my own soil, among my own people," she has said.

Hasina's Awami League, which governed for more than 20 years across several terms, is currently banned, and many of its leaders are in prison or exile. Prime Minister Tarique Rahman's government continues to seek her extradition from India, which New Delhi has so far refused. Political observers say her return could deepen Bangladesh's divisions while also reshaping relations between Dhaka and New Delhi.