Ousted Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has formally requested a new passport and national identity card so that she can return from self-imposed exile in India, in what is being seen as the clearest step yet towards her planned return to Bangladesh in December, more than two years after a deadly uprising ended her long rule.
The request was made on Monday in a letter from her lawyers to Bangladesh's acting high commissioner in New Delhi, according to a copy of the letter seen by news agency Reuters. It is her first such communication since she fled Bangladesh in 2024, and it marks a decisive move in a return plan that she has spoken about for months but had not previously backed with a formal application.
Hasina, 78, has been living in exile in India since August 2024, when weeks of student-led protests, which turned into a nationwide uprising, forced her from office and from the country. She has denied the charges on which she was later sentenced to death in her absence, and she has told Reuters that she plans to return to surrender before a court in Bangladesh.
The letter was written by her lawyers at London-based Matrix Chambers to Preeti Rahman, the acting high commissioner at Bangladesh's embassy in Delhi. In it, the lawyers referred to the reported revocation of her existing Bangladeshi passport and National Identity Card, known as the NID, by the interim government and other authorities, and asked for new documents to be issued.
"In view of the reported revocation of her existing Bangladeshi passport and National Identity Card (NID) by the Interim Government and other authorities, I respectfully request that you take the necessary steps to issue a new Bangladeshi passport and National Identity Card for our client," the letter said, according to Reuters, which reported the contents of the document.
The request is significant because a valid passport and identity card are the basic formalities Hasina would need before she could travel back to Bangladesh and present herself before a court. Her aides said on Monday that the date of her return would be announced once the various formalities were completed, signalling that the legal and diplomatic groundwork for the journey is now under way.
Hasina has told Reuters that she plans to return to surrender before a court, a statement that frames her return not as a political comeback in the ordinary sense but as a legal act: a former prime minister submitting herself to the judicial process in the country she once governed.
Whether the interim government in Dhaka will facilitate that return, or obstruct it, remains an open question, and the passport request puts that question directly to the authorities in Delhi and Dhaka.
The backdrop to the request is stark. In November last year, a war-crimes court in Bangladesh sentenced Hasina to death in her absence for ordering a deadly crackdown on the student-led uprising that brought down her government. She has denied the charges from exile, and her supporters have described the proceedings as politically motivated.
The sentence, delivered without her present in court, has hung over her exile ever since, and any return would place her at the centre of the most consequential legal case in Bangladesh's recent history.
The uprising of 2024 ended a rule that had lasted for a decade and a half. Hasina first became prime minister in 1996, returned to office in 2009 and remained there until her fall, winning successive elections that her critics said were neither free nor fair. Her Awami League was for decades the country's largest political party, and its organisation reached into every district of Bangladesh.
After her fall, the party was banned, its offices were attacked, and many of its leaders were arrested or went into hiding.
The interim government that took power after the uprising has pursued cases against Hasina and her associates, revoked her passport, and sought to reshape the country's politics. The ban on the Awami League, the death sentence and the revocation of her documents were all part of that effort.
Her request for a new passport, made through lawyers in London to a diplomat in Delhi, is therefore not a routine administrative matter: it is a test of whether the interim government will allow its most prominent opponent to come home.
The timing matters too. Hasina's aides have spoken of a return in December, and the passport application is the first concrete step towards that timetable. December would mark more than two years since she fled, and a return then would coincide with a period in which Bangladesh's politics remain unsettled.
Elections, the future of the interim government and the fate of the Awami League are all unresolved, and the return of the country's most consequential political figure would inevitably reshape the debate.
For India, where Hasina has lived since her flight, the request also carries diplomatic weight. New Delhi gave her refuge in 2024, a decision that strained its relations with the interim government in Dhaka, which has sought her extradition. India has not handed her over, and her continued presence in the country has been a persistent irritant in bilateral ties.
A formal request for travel documents, routed through the Bangladeshi mission in Delhi, brings the question of her status back to the centre of the relationship between the two neighbours.
What happens next depends on the response of the Bangladeshi high commission in Delhi and the interim government in Dhaka. The letter asks for the applications to be processed, but it does not set a deadline, and there is no indication yet of how the authorities will respond. If the documents are issued, Hasina could travel to Bangladesh and surrender to a court, as she has said she intends to do.
If they are refused, or left unanswered, her return plan would stall, and the standoff between the exiled former prime minister and the government that replaced her would continue.
Legal experts note that the death sentence in absentia complicates any return. A surrender before a court would typically open the way for the case to be reheard with the accused present, but the political stakes are so high that the legal process cannot be separated from the politics. Her supporters see her as a leader who was driven out by a violent uprising and denied a fair hearing.
Her opponents see her as a ruler responsible for a deadly crackdown who must face justice. Both sides will watch the passport request closely.
The request also raises the prospect of fresh political and legal tensions in a country where her party is now banned and where the interim government is still trying to establish its authority. A return by Hasina, even to face a court, would be the most dramatic political event in Bangladesh since the uprising itself, and it would test the interim government's confidence, the courts' independence and the public mood.
For now, the letter itself is the news: the first formal communication from Hasina since her flight, the first step in a plan she has described in interviews, and the clearest indication yet that she intends to come back. Whether December brings her return, or another delay, will depend on decisions taken in Dhaka and Delhi in the coming weeks.
(Reporting based on Reuters.)