Ousted prime minister to return to Bangladesh, son says

Ousted Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will return home once elections are declared, her son Sajeeb Wazed Joy said.

Ms Hasina, who resigned and fled the country earlier this week following major unrest, is now in India.

Bangladeshi media reported that more than 500 people have been killed in weeks of protests against Ms Hasina. Many of them were shot by police.

Thousands of people were injured in the worst violence Bangladesh has seen since its 1971 independence war.

“Of course, she will come. [to Bangladesh]”Mr Wazed told the BBC that his mother would return when the interim government decided to hold elections.

The military-backed interim government, headed by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, was sworn in on Thursday along with 16 advisers.

Two of the student protest leaders were among the advisers.

Mr. Wazed is an IT professional currently living in the United States.

He served as an IT adviser to Ms Hasina for many years when she served as prime minister from 2009 to 2024.

“She will definitely come back,” her son said.

“Whether she returns to politics or not, that decision has not been made yet. She is quite fed up with the way she is being treated.”

The student-led movement began as protests against civil service job quotas last month before morphing into a broader unrest aimed at ousting Ms Hasina after a brutal police crackdown.

Mr Joy is confident that when the vote is held, the Awami League, Ms Hasina’s party, will win.

“I believe that if elections were held in Bangladesh today, if the elections were free, fair and had a level playing field, the Awami League would win,” he said.

Ms Hasina became prime minister in a a fourth consecutive term in a controversial election held in January 2024.

The main opposition parties boycotted the election on the grounds that under Ms Hasina’s government there could not be “any free and fair elections”.

Her son called the current interim government unconstitutional and said elections would be held within 90 days.

However, he has remained cagey about his political ambitions or whether he will return home to run for the Awami League leadership, following in the footsteps of his grandfather, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding leader of Bangladesh, and Ms Hasina.

“No decision has been made on this matter. I have never had political ambitions,” he said.

But he added that he was angry about the way protesters looted and burned down their ancestral homes, including a museum dedicated to his grandfather in Dhaka.

“In this situation, I am really angry, I will do whatever is necessary,” he said.

He said he was in touch with party supporters who were very upset and angry about what had happened over the past few weeks.

“If about 40,000 protesters can force the government to resign, what would happen if the protests were organized by the Awami League, which has millions of supporters?” he asserted.

Ms Hasina and her sister (Rehana Siddiq) have been stranded in Delhi since Monday.

India is a strong supporter of the Bangladesh leader.

It is believed she is trying to seek asylum in the UK, the United Arab Emirates or Saudi Arabia.

“The questions about her visa and asylum are all just rumors,” her son said.

“She is not applying for a job anywhere. She is staying here now, monitoring the situation in Bangladesh.

“Her ultimate goal was always to return home to Bangladesh.”

Asked about the well-documented human rights abuses and extrajudicial killings during his mother’s 15 years in power, he said there had been some mistakes.

“Of course, there are individuals in our government who have made mistakes, but we always fix things,” he added.

“We have a minister’s son, a member of the special police force. He is in prison for extrajudicial killing. That is unprecedented.”

“My mother tried to do the right thing in making the arrest,” her son stressed.