Dhaka conveys to Delhi its displeasure over Sheikh Hasina's statement from India

New Delhi: Dhaka has conveyed to New Delhi its displeasure over Bangladesh’s deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s appeal from India to the people of her country to observe Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s death anniversary on Thursday though the interim government that succeeded hers cancelled the national holiday commemorating his assassination.

The interim government led by economist Muhammad Yunus as the chief advisor also claimed that the media reports in India about atrocities on Hindus and other minority communities in Bangladesh were “highly exaggerated”.

Touhid Hossain, the advisor on foreign affairs in Muhammad Yunus’s interim government, told Pranay Kumar Verma, New Delhi’s envoy to Dhaka, that the statement given by Sheikh Hasina from India about Bangladesh was not “conducive to fostering better bilateral relations”.

Verma conveyed to Hossain that India was keen to work with the interim government of Bangladesh in the coming days in light of the common aspirations of the people of the two countries for peace, security, and development, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the neighbouring country.

“We are interested in advancing our relationship with Bangladesh,” Verma told journalists after his meeting with Hossain. The High Commissioner of India to Bangladesh also noted that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had extended best wishes to Chief Advisor Muhammad Yunus.

Hossain and Verma held talks even as a series of cases against Hasina were lodged in the courts in Bangladesh, accusing her of murder and genocide.

“It was only a courtesy meeting today. There was no agenda. No specific matter was discussed,” Verma said when a journalist asked him if he and Hossain discussed the prospects of the return of Hasina from India to Bangladesh. Hossain had earlier indicated that Dhaka would ask New Delhi to ensure the deposed prime minister’s return from India if the law of Bangladesh demanded it.

Hasina had issued the statement from an undisclosed location in India even as Bangladesh’s interim government cancelled the public holiday on the occasion of the National Day of Mourning on August 15 solemnly and with due respect.

She had demanded punishment for the people responsible for the violence, arson, and killings in the name of the recent agitation by the students against reservation in government jobs. She had also called upon the people of her nation to bring to justice the people, who recently vandalised the Bangabandhu Museum at Dhanmondi in Dhaka.

Her son Sajeeb Wazed had posted the statement on X on Tuesday.

Bangladesh has so far been observing August 15 as a National Day of Mourning to commemorate the assassination of the country’s founder and father of Sheikh Hasina, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahaman, by some rogue military officials at his official residence in Dhaka in 1975. Rahman had led the 1971 liberation war that ended with Bangladesh being carved out of Pakistan as an independent nation. Not only Sheikh Mujibur Rahman but almost all members of his family had been killed by the military officials. Only Hasina and her sister Sheikh Rehana had survived as they had gone on a tour to Germany.

The house where Sheikh Mujibur Rahaman was assassinated had been turned into Bangabandhu Museum. But it was vandalised by protesters on August 5.

The student organisations, which spearheaded the protests leading to the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government, decided to discontinue observing August 15 as the National Day of Mourning. They stated that August 15 had been appropriated by the Awami League “as a symbol of political and cultural fascism”.

Hasina stepped down as the prime minister of Bangladesh on August 5 before flying from Dhaka to the Indian Air Force station at Hindon on the outskirts of New Delhi. She left Dhaka just a few hours before her official residence – ‘Gana Bhavan’ – had been stormed by irate mobs, protesting against her Awami League government’s crackdown on the students, who had been protesting against reservation in public sector jobs.