A dramatic new account revealed how a timely phone call from India may have saved Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s life during the Bangladesh coup amid student-led protests last year.
According to a forthcoming book Inshallah Bangladesh: The Story of an Unfinished Revolution, authored by Deep Halder, Jaydeep Majumdar and Shahidul Hasan Khokon, youth-led protests in Bangladesh escalated into violent unrest on August 5, with mobs closing in on the Prime Minister’s residence in Dhaka.
At the height of the crisis, Sheikh Hasina, then inside the Ganabhaban, reportedly received a phone call from a senior Indian official she knew well. Minutes after the conversation, she made the decision to leave Bangladesh. The book, cited by News 18, claims she escaped by helicopter just 20 minutes before a mob reached her residence. She then boarded a cargo flight that eventually took her to India.
Avoiding a tragic fate
The book underscores the gravity of the moment, noting that if Hasina had not received that call at 1:30 pm, she could have faced the same fate as her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
Although Indian aviation authorities had cleared any aircraft carrying Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to enter Indian airspace, the book claims that even as late as 1:30 pm on August 5, 2024, Bangladesh Army Chief General Waker-uz-Zaman, along with the Air Force and Navy Chiefs, could not persuade the “adamant” Hasina to leave. She reportedly tried to get her sister, Sheikh Rehana, to convince her, and even spoke with her son Sajeeb Wajed in the United States, who urged her to fly to India. Hasina refused, saying she would “rather die than flee her country,” even as a frenzied mob was advancing on Ganabhaban.
The decisive call from India
It wasn’t until a blunt message was conveyed to her over a phone call by an ‘identified’ Indian official that she decided to leave Bangladesh.
Before leaving, Hasina requested permission to deliver a recorded speech, but the service chiefs denied her request as the crowd was on the verge of storming Ganabhaban.
She ultimately departed for India, landing at Hindon Airbase in Ghaziabad, where she has remained in exile since.
