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Resetting a bilateral relationship is hard enough under ordinary circumstances. It becomes considerably harder when one country is harbouring the other’s ousted, death-sentenced former leader. That is precisely the bind Bangladesh and India find themselves in, and it was on full display in Dhaka on Monday when Prime Minister Tarique Rahman met India’s newly appointed High Commissioner, Dinesh Trivedi.
Rahman used the meeting to call for a “conducive environment” to advance ties between the two neighbours, according to a statement from his office. The phrasing was deliberate and telling. Six months into his government’s tenure, Rahman has consistently signalled a desire for stable relations with India, Bangladesh’s largest neighbour. But Monday marked the first time he has explicitly framed the relationship as one that requires conditions to be improved before it can move forward, a subtle but meaningful shift in tone.
The Hasina Problem That Neither Side Can Easily Resolve
At the centre of the diplomatic friction is Sheikh Hasina, who fled Bangladesh in August 2024 following the collapse of her government and has been living in India since. She is not simply a political exile. She is facing active legal proceedings in Bangladesh and was sentenced to death in November. Dhaka formally pressed New Delhi during Monday’s meeting to expedite her extradition, according to the prime minister’s office.
India’s response has been measured and non-committal. The Indian High Commission posted on X that Trivedi reaffirmed India’s commitment to engaging with Bangladesh in a “positive, constructive and forward-looking manner,” which is diplomatic language for saying very little. New Delhi has previously stated it is examining the extradition request in accordance with its own legal and judicial procedures, a formulation that gives it significant room to delay without outright refusing.
The timing of Bangladesh’s latest push is not accidental. Just days before the Rahman-Trivedi meeting, Hasina participated in an online audio conference, her first media interaction since leaving Bangladesh. She reportedly reiterated her intention to return to the country in December. The event drew sharp condemnation from Dhaka’s foreign ministry, which described the opportunity given to Hasina to hold such an event as “deeply hurtful” and said Bangladesh was “outraged.” The implicit accusation was that India, by allowing Hasina to operate politically from its soil, was not behaving as a neutral host.
Why India Is Unlikely to Move Quickly
From New Delhi’s perspective, the calculus is complicated by domestic politics and strategic interests. Hasina’s Awami League was long considered India’s preferred partner in Dhaka, given its secular orientation and cooperative stance on issues including border security and connectivity. Handing her over to face a death sentence would be politically and diplomatically costly for the Indian government, regardless of the legal framework surrounding the extradition request.
There is also a broader regional dimension. India has watched the political transition in Bangladesh with some wariness, particularly given concerns about the influence of Islamist groups in the new political landscape. Rahman’s government, for its part, has been working to demonstrate that it can manage relations with multiple partners without tilting dramatically away from India, but the Hasina issue keeps pulling the relationship off course.
The extradition treaty between the two countries does exist, signed in 2013, but treaties of this kind routinely include provisions that allow the requested state to decline on grounds of political offences or where the death penalty is involved. India has not publicly invoked any such clause, but the slow pace of its review suggests it is in no hurry to resolve the matter.
What a Genuine Reset Would Require
Rahman’s call for a “conducive environment” points toward a recognition that the relationship cannot simply be managed around the Hasina issue indefinitely. Bangladesh and India share a long and economically significant border, deep trade ties, and a range of cooperative frameworks covering water sharing, energy, and transit. These practical interests give both sides reasons to keep talking even when the political temperature rises.
But a genuine reset would require India to either make progress on the extradition question or offer Bangladesh something substantial enough to shift the political conversation at home. For Rahman, who leads a government that came to power partly on the back of mass protests against Hasina’s administration, being seen to let the extradition issue slide would carry real domestic political costs.
The meeting with Trivedi produced no concrete outcomes, at least none that were made public. What it did produce was a clear statement of where both sides stand: Bangladesh wants better relations and wants Hasina back, while India wants to be seen as cooperative without actually being moved to act. That gap, more than any specific policy disagreement, is what makes this diplomatic relationship so difficult to unstick. How long both governments can sustain that ambiguity without it hardening into something more adversarial is the question that will define the relationship in the months ahead.
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