Dhaka, Bangladesh — New Delhi and Dhaka had been quietly planning Bangladesh Prime Minister Tarique Rahman’s first go to to India since taking workplace earlier this 12 months, when a information convention shattered these efforts.
Former Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina, convicted of crimes towards humanity in her nation, addressed a information convention held within the coronary heart of the Indian capital by video on August 5, the place she, her son and their Awami League get together colleagues criticised the mass rebellion that had introduced her down.
Bangladesh responded swiftly, saying it was “outraged” that Hasina had been allowed to talk publicly from Indian soil, the place she has been in exile since her ouster in August 2024. Dhaka had particularly warned New Delhi towards permitting political actions that would have an effect on bilateral relations.
Bangladesh subsequently stated a “propitious setting” was wanted earlier than the journey, whereas asking New Delhi to behave on extradition requests involving Hasina and different fugitives.
India says the requests stay “below examination” via established procedures.
However interviews with Bangladeshi officers and analysts recommend the quick dispute could also be extra nuanced than a easy extradition standoff.
The important thing query could also be much less when India palms Hasina over than what India permits her to do whereas she stays there.
The ‘megaphone’ drawback
Faisal Mahmud, a former press minister on the Bangladesh Excessive Fee in New Delhi, stated extradition and Hasina’s political actions needs to be handled as separate points.
“The stalemate between Bangladesh and India stems largely from New Delhi giving Sheikh Hasina a literal megaphone whereas she stays in exile there – one thing Dhaka had particularly requested India to not permit,” Mahmud instructed Al Jazeera.
Extradition, he stated, was “a wholly completely different matter, and a much more difficult and prolonged one” that the Rahman authorities understood.
“At this level, the deadlock over Tarique’s proposed go to to India, and over any broader reset of the frosty bilateral relationship, isn’t centred on Hasina’s extradition,” Mahmud stated. “It’s centred on India permitting her to conduct political actions from its soil.”
That concern predates the federal government below Rahman’s Bangladesh Nationalist Occasion.
Throughout an April 4, 2025 assembly with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, then head of Bangladesh’s interim administration, requested New Delhi to stop Hasina from making what he described as “incendiary statements” from Indian soil.
Humaiun Kobir, deputy head of Bangladesh’s Ministry of International Affairs, instructed Al Jazeera that Dhaka wished “an excellent and dealing relationship with India based mostly on belief and mutual respect”.
“However letting terrorists like Sheikh Hasina destabilise our nation from India isn’t acceptable,” Kobir stated, utilizing the federal government’s description of the previous prime minister.
He argued that relations may enter “a brand new part” if the management of each nations wished it, however stated New Delhi should recognise Bangladesh’s modified political actuality following the 2024 rebellion.
“Nobody can conduct any terror exercise from a sovereign land,” Kobir stated. “It’s unacceptable that the terrorists who killed our persons are allowed to speak from their land and incite violence in Bangladesh.”
He stated Dhaka wished India to return different Bangladeshis accused of crimes, together with suspects within the killing of Sharif Osman Hadi, an outspoken critic of Hasina and India who was murdered in 2025. His alleged killers have been subsequently arrested by India, the place they’d crossed over.
But Kobir’s feedback additionally recommend Dhaka doesn’t need the Hasina dispute to indefinitely forestall high-level engagement.
Talks over Rahman’s go to stay below means, he stated, describing a gathering between the Bangladeshi and Indian prime ministers as finally unavoidable. Over the weekend, actually, India’s Rashtrapati Bhavan — the presidential palace — issued a discover suggesting that it was getting ready to host Rahman, solely to withdraw the doc hours later.
“A gathering is a should,” Kobir instructed Al Jazeera. “However solely when it aligns with our nationwide curiosity.”
“It may be subsequent week, two weeks later or two months later,” he added.
That distinction issues as a result of proscribing Hasina’s political exercise and extraditing her current very completely different challenges for New Delhi.
Hasina was sentenced to loss of life in absentia by Bangladesh’s Worldwide Crimes Tribunal after being convicted of crimes towards humanity over the lethal crackdown on the 2024 rebellion. She rejects the proceedings as politically motivated.
Bangladesh first formally sought Hasina’s extradition on December 23, 2024, via a diplomatic word despatched below the nations’ 2013 extradition treaty.
After her loss of life sentence in November 2025, Dhaka reiterated the request, and India subsequently stated it was “below examination”.
On August 11, India’s Ministry of Exterior Affairs (MEA) stated Bangladesh’s request for Sheikh Hasina’s extradition was being examined below India’s “established procedures”, including that New Delhi would share an replace when there was additional progress.
The MEA didn’t reply to Al Jazeera’s request for additional particulars on the matter.
Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty, a former Indian excessive commissioner to Bangladesh, stated the matter should proceed via treaty provisions and India’s authorized system.
“All authorized formalities should be accomplished for acquiring a judicial order for extradition,” Chakravarty instructed Al Jazeera.
He stated the treaty additionally contained grounds below which extradition might be refused.
Home politics shapes diplomacy
Some analysts see a political contradiction within the extradition demand.
David Bergman, a veteran observer of Bangladesh politics, argues that Dhaka is urgent India to return Hasina whereas probably preferring that she stay outdoors the nation.
“Bangladesh calls for extradition realizing that the Indian authorities won’t ever extradite Hasina,” Bergman instructed Al Jazeera, including: “It’s apparently taking part in to the gallery of Bangladesh public opinion.”
“On the similar time, the federal government doesn’t really need Hasina to return,” Bergman stated, referring to a dilemma that different analysts too have pointed to: Hasina’s return may create as many political and authorized issues for Dhaka because it resolves.
Bangladesh would have custody of a former prime minister sentenced to loss of life, forcing the federal government to confront the politically and internationally delicate penalties of imprisoning, and probably executing, one of many nation’s most consequential political figures.
However the Hasina query is just one a part of a broader recalibration of Dhaka’s relationship with New Delhi.
Shahab Enam Khan, professor of worldwide relations at Jahangirnagar College, stated Dhaka’s present posture shouldn’t be learn merely as anti-India. Khan instructed Al Jazeera that Bangladesh nonetheless wants commerce, defence, safety and people-to-people ties with India.
He stated the federal government’s stance displays two pressures: asserting Bangladesh’s authorized and sovereign authority, and responding to public sentiment formed by what he described as New Delhi’s shut alignment with Hasina’s Awami League over the previous 20 years.
Khan argued that India had invested closely within the Awami League as its principal political associate in Bangladesh and had been gradual to totally modify to the nation’s post-2024 political actuality.
He stated New Delhi was now “more and more embracing the political actuality in Bangladesh”, however added that Dhaka wanted to see that shift translated into concrete outcomes.
Neither facet needs a rupture
The political dispute has not halted sensible engagement.
A Confederation of Indian Trade delegation visited Dhaka this month for talks with ministers and enterprise leaders at the same time as uncertainty over Rahman’s proposed India go to intensified. Bilateral merchandise commerce stays above $12bn yearly, with India exporting $10.56bn value of products to Bangladesh, in accordance with the Indian Excessive Fee in Dhaka.
For former Indian Excessive Commissioner Chakravarty, that displays an unavoidable structural actuality.
“Geography is an immutable think about geopolitics,” he instructed Al Jazeera. “It binds India and Bangladesh in a way that can not be ignored by policymakers in each nations.”
However he criticised Dhaka for attaching circumstances to Rahman’s go to.
“I don’t suppose that the bigger nationwide curiosity and bilateral ties needs to be held hostage to any particular person,” Chakravarty stated.
Sreeradha Datta, a professor specialising in South Asian research at India’s OP Jindal World College, pointed to a different dimension of that interdependence: Bangladesh’s makes an attempt to diversify its exterior relationships haven’t diminished India’s strategic significance.
She stated Dhaka’s increasing engagement with america and China, rising defence cooperation with Turkiye and renewed outreach to Pakistan have added to New Delhi’s considerations about Bangladesh’s overseas coverage path.
China has change into notably vital, Datta stated, with Beijing’s sustained financial and strategic engagement giving it a rising function in Bangladesh’s improvement and overseas coverage calculations.
Even so, she argued, Bangladesh’s broader exterior partnerships can not diminish India’s structural significance.
“Neither facet can keep disengaged for lengthy,” Datta instructed Al Jazeera, noting that geography ensures India will stay strategically vital to Bangladesh.
The 2 nations share a 4,096km (2,546-mile) land border.
Datta stated Bangladesh additionally occupies a vital place in India’s japanese connectivity, safety and neighbourhood technique, including that the connection is supported by greater than 70 bilateral mechanisms.
That structural dependence additionally helps clarify why, regardless of the political standoff, New Delhi has stopped in need of closing the door on high-level engagement.
As just lately as August 18, the MEA stated Rahman’s invitation remained open, whereas reiterating that New Delhi needs a “constructive, constructive and forward-looking” relationship with Bangladesh based mostly on mutual curiosity and reciprocity.
The unresolved query is what concession, public or non-public, may create sufficient political house for each governments to maneuver in direction of a gathering with out showing to have backed down.
