India Reviewing Sheikh Hasina Extradition Request in Subtle Policy Shift

India has on Friday indicated that the demand by the Bangladesh government to extradite its former premier Sheikh Hasina is under administration as a judicial and legal issue, although New Delhi will positively interact with all stakeholders on the situation.

India has shown a slight change in its stand on the issue, which was brought to the fore when Bangladesh foreign minister Khalilur Rahman held a meeting with the Indian foreign minister, S Jaishankar in New Delhi on April 8, particularly following the Indian side emphasis on developing a working relationship with the new government in Dhaka.

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Sheikh Hasina has spent her life in self-exile in India since she escaped Bangladesh in August 2024 amid protests by students who followed the fall of her government, weeks after it had taken power. Bangladesh’s erstwhile interim government first requested her extradition in December 2024.

“The request is being examined as part of ongoing judicial and internal legal processes. We will continue to engage constructively on the issue with all stakeholders,” Jaiswal told a weekly media briefing in response to a question from HT.

Jaiswal, answering a different question on a law that is expected to provide legal support to the ban placed on Hasina Awami league party by the interim government, passed by Parliament in Bangladesh this month, said, We are very much aware of the developments.

He referred to the external affairs ministry’s readout on the meeting between Jaishankar and Rahman in New Delhi and said: “I would also like to emphasise that the external affairs minister reiterated India’s desire to engage constructively with the new government [in Dhaka] and further strengthen bilateral ties.”

The two parties have accepted to discuss plans of expanding their relationship via appropriate bilateral systems.

The foreign ministry of Bangladesh after the meeting of Rahman with Jaishankar had said the Bangladesh side had reiterated its demands to extradite the Bangladesh side, Sheikh Hasina and her home minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal, who had been sentenced to death by the International Crimes Tribunal.

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On November 17 last year, the Tribunal, a domestic court of war crimes, sentenced Hasina and Kamal to death after being found guilty of crimes against humanity in the crackdown of the student-led protests in 2024. In a legal communication, delivered to Bangladeshi officials this month, Hasina has insisted that the death sentence be quashed on the ground that it is legally unsound, and that any subsequent action against her be carried out in accordance with international standards of due process of law.

Those well-informed on the issue have said that the recent passage of the Anti-Terrorism (Amendment) Bill 2026 by the Parliament of Bangladesh that seeks to endorse the Anti-Terrorism (Amendment) Ordinance 2025 issued by the interim government has been accompanied by the introduction of a ban on individuals or entities that engage in terrorist attacks.

No political party is specifically mentioned in the law and it remains to be seen whether it would be applied against the Awami league, the people said.

Meanwhile, the citizens cited the long-standing political stance of inclusion of the polity in Bangladesh on the part of India. The ministry of external affairs had requested that the election in February in Bangladesh would be free, fair, inclusive and credible.

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