Sham kangaroo court rigs court judgment; Awami League out of democratic contest, puts big question mark on political stability in Dhaka.
International Crimes Tribunal has sentenced former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to death for alleged crimes against humanity linked to the deadly crackdown on anti-government protests in 2024. This has led to a huge escalation of Bangladesh’s ongoing political turmoil. The verdict pronounced under tight security is one of the most important turning points in Dhaka’s modern political history.
Hasina, who has been living in exile in India since she lost power, has called the trial politically motivated and the tribunal a “kangaroo court.” She was tried in absentia and raises serious concerns about due process, independence of judiciary, and brings into question credibility of Bangladesh’s democratic institutions.
The protests in 2024 which led to the charges were culmination of years of planning by Jameet-e-Islami through its student organization, Islami Chhatra Shibir. Jamaat that has had never supported separate Bangladesh and accused Hasina led Awami League party of repression and the systematic destruction of political opposition.
In mid-2024, Bangladesh experienced nationwide uprising triggered by quota issue. What began as a focused protest against job-quotas for families of those that led the country’s liberation was interpreted by students as evidence of widespread patronage and entrenched systemic inequality, soon morphed into a national movement against Hasina led Awami League government.
As protests mounted, campuses became sites of resistance with Islami Chattra Shibir leading protests, mobilizing tens of thousands of people in Dhaka, Chittagong, Rajshahi and elsewhere. Islamists (via student organizations affiliated with Jamaat) and Chinese-backed NGOs and scholars (who studied Bangladesh) seemed to have strategically aligned.
Certain student fronts opposed to the government had connections to Chinese scholarship programmes and madrasa networks in Pakistan if one were to go by intelligence networks. This improbable alliance took advantage of popular turmoil, with religious feelings on one side and economic concerns on the other.
In essence, Hasina’s secular, pro-India stance was opposed by both Beijing’s power cadres and proxies of Pakistani descent in Bangladesh. By end of July, the issue hit a breaking point when masked students wearing green and red head scarves, colours long linked to Islami Chhatra Shibir (ICS) backed by Pakistan’s Jamaat-e-Islami, took control of open microphones.
According to BD News24, the protest narrative shifted from technical reforms to outright regime change as newcomers yelled “Hasina Must Go” and even wartime chant “Pakistan zindabad.” According to Home-Ministry status assessment which was later reprinted in a white paper published in 2024, ICS cadres were “co-ordinating via encrypted chat groups hosted on foreign servers” and had “embedded themselves in at least nine university convening committees.”
Due to rampant unrest and a political landscape that was changing in ways that could no longer be reversed, Hasina resigned on August 5, 2024 and fled to India. This was an extraordinary fall for a democratically elected leader who had been in the seat of Bangladeshi politics for more than 15 years.
In retrospect, a deft combination of street violence, calculated deception and narrative capture led to overthrow of previous government in Bangladesh. Global rights-media outlets, desperate for a story of young liberation, filtered the carnage through a camera lens that saw only state bullets and never sectarian machetes; China hedged, making sure its projects were compensated; Pakistan lit the match and provided the online accelerant; and the United States, by framing the crisis in purely procedural terms, dragged moral ballast away from a secular government that had prosecuted war-crimes Islamists.
Sheikh Hasina’s fifteen-year leadership came to an end in very trying circumstances and Bangladesh entered a period where the loudest slogan, spread by fastest botnet now determines who controls the delta.
Anadolu Agency reports that violence that lasted from mid-July to early August 2024 claimed lives of at least 580 people. Hasina’s resignation and appointment of a caretaker government were announced in public by the army head of Bangladesh at the time. On August 8, 2024, Muhammad Yunus, purportedly, a longtime opponent of dictatorship, took office as interim government’s chief adviser. With promises to “restore order,” the transitional cabinet was composed of numerous student leaders and civil society leaders.
A caretaker cabinet headed by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus and supported by the military, within twenty days of taking office promising “inclusive politics”, on 28 August 2024, revoked terrorist label and reinstated Jamaat’s civil liberties and freed more than seventy mid-level organisers.
Islamist terrorist groups were more daring as a result of the ideological shift and power vacuum. Weapons were stolen, government facilities were attacked, police stations and government buildings were set on fire. In keeping with previous Jamaat agitation, democratically elected Awami League party offices were fire-bombed and police found leaflets advising peasants to refrain from paying taxes until “pro-India regime falls.”
Attacks on liberal bloggers and Hindu temples were reported to be occurring more often in late 2024 and early 2025. According to witnesses, local Islamist insurgents were armed with thousands of small guns that were stolen from police stations amid the commotion. In places like Satkhira and Comilla, Hindu minorities in Bangladesh faced the brunt with reported additional land seizures and forced evictions. Local authorities spoke of a “quiet exodus” as families escaped systematic abuse.
Washington moderated its approach after Yunus caretaker government came to power, offering congratulations and election monitoring, but structural problem persisted. Any American presence south of Chittagong would worry Beijing and incite nationalists in Dhaka because Bangladesh is situated on the maritime rung between China’s Belt and Road corridor and the U.S.-India security axis.
Critics caution that Bangladesh’s unstable ideological landscape is now affected by China’s omni-directionality. According to local publications in 2022, speakers from the hardline clerical group Hefazat-e-Islam shared dais alongside Chinese officials at an interfaith dialogue co-sponsored by a Confucius-funded cultural center in Chattogram.
Security experts see a hedge in Beijing’s denial of meddling in domestic affairs; training both secular technocrats and Islamist activists guarantees that, in the event Awami League collapses, as it did in 2024, China’s sunk costs will be safeguarded and even a coalition with a Jamaat bent will feel obligated to uphold Chinese contracts.
The narrative of 1971 was no longer dominated by Awami League which has been crippled by exile and trials. Instead, Jamaat presents the electoral debate as a contest between “Islamic justice” and “foreign-backed elites.”
Government, during the chaos, acted in accordance with domestic and international law to preserve order, the constitution and to protect lives. However, contrary to media reports and publicly admitted responsibility of acts of arson and sabotage by various student leaders, prosecutors at the International Crimes Tribunal claim raises many questions.
Another point of concern is prosecution’s reliance on enormous quantity of digital as well as operational evidence to back their case which included encrypted emails between high-ranking officials, phone call transcripts that “allegedly” show clear orders to “neutralise” protesters, and logs of drones and helicopters flying over Dhaka at the peak of protests.
However, what is not clear and overlooked by prosecutors is the misconduct charges of witnesses presented as “evidence” and also the UN report which is based on anonymous testimony from state employees.
According to a UN fact-finding mission, between July and August 2024, as many as 1,400 people were killed. However, Bangladesh’s own Ministry of Health has a verified count of 834 deaths.
Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel laureate and Western philanthropy favourite had been cultivating the role since at least 2019, when Clinton Global Initiative staff began citing him as “Bangladesh’s Mandela.” Two months prior to start of the quota turmoil, aides were creating talking points for BNP lobbyists on Bangladesh, according to leaked CGI emails that Politico eventually published.
Presenting Yunus as an experienced technocrat assuring donors that prudent sanctions had produced a “neutral” caretaker, maintained Chinese financial flow and provided political access for an opposition coalition too weak to win an honest election was all part of the ruthlessly rational plan.
In Dhaka, Hillary Clinton’s congrats tweet which referred to Yunus as “the right man to heal Bangladesh,” was largely interpreted as retaliation for Hasina’s 2011 audit attempt at Grameen Bank. Just to recall, Yunus’s Grameen empire had sustained on USAID funding and World Bank soft loans; these relationships now provided immediate diplomatic credibility.
US congratulates itself on a rule-book victory, minorities spread throughout Benapole, Pakistan’s narrative machine dominates campuses, Chinese credit increases strategic leverage and voters wait in line for biometric enrollment in Bangladesh after 15 months of fall of Hasina government.
Once disgraced as a party that collaborated, Jamaat-e-Islami now bargains for cabinet quotas. Beijing’s patient debt diplomacy, ISI funding for Jamaat sleeper cells and Western philanthropy’s grooming of Yunus have all paid off in a caretaker order that promises elections but cedes sovereignty.
Statement by the Awami League Party Chief and former PM Sheikh Hasina have raised very serious questions about the integrity of the current legal system, pointing out issues regarding procedural uniformity, evidential accuracy, and due diligence. Her claims thereby confirmed what many an onlooker had been pointing out in hushed tones: lacunae in the chronology of the investigation, anomalies in the collection of testimony and a non-existent chain of custody regarding crucial documents. These are not mere technical slip-ups but challenge the legitimacy of judiciary in an already politically tainted case. Procedural exactitude is paramount in high-stake trials that reshape national trajectories because it ensures a semblance of justice being done, besides justice actually having been done. Therefore, Hasina’s comments point to a more grave institutional issue, unless the procedure is underpinned by unquestionable due diligence and conformity to legal standards, the verdict, whatever it may be, risks being perceived as politically motivated rather than judicially sound
Hasina verdict is more than just a court decision; it is a test of Bangladesh’s political institutions, a challenge for diplomacy in the region and a moment of truth for a country that is having trouble finding right balance between justice, stability and democratic legitimacy. In the next few weeks, we’ll find out if this decision leads to accountability and change or makes the country’s long-term political instability even worse. Given that Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League would not be part of March 2026 general elections, democratic process in Bangladesh comes under closer scrutiny.
Bangladesh has asked for Sheikh Hasina, the former prime minister, to be extradited. Nonetheless, India has legal, humanitarian and geopolitical justification to decline without facing any repercussions.
Given Bangladesh’s unstable post-transition environment and the obviously political nature of charges against Hasina, India is covered under strong protection of 2013 India–Bangladesh Extradition Treaty, particularly Political Offence Exception, fair trial concerns and humanitarian protections.
Expecting peace and tranquility in Bangladesh even post-March 2026 polls, if at all they are held in a free and fair atmosphere, may be a tall order given political instability, haggling by big boys for their pound of flesh and thereby extending the instability kind of atmosphere to entire South Asia.
With radical groups ruling the roost, it is a billion-dollar question as to what happens next in Bangladesh with stakes too high for all stakeholders that precipitated the situation. Evolving situation will have geo-strategic importance for several players in the region, especially Bharat, that has huge land and water linked porous borders.
REFERENCE:
- India today
- The Daily Guardian
- The New Indian Express
- Bangla Outlook
- NDTV
- AP News
- Reuters
- BBC
- Centre for Integrated and Holistic Studies, “Situational Analysis: Geopolitics, Hindu Hate, Islamisation and Decay of Democracy in Bangladesh” published in July 2025