Rise, Rule, Ruin
For nearly two decades, Sheikh Hasina’s name moved with the pulse of Bangladesh, sometimes steady, sometimes storm-tossed. To her supporters, she was the architect of a modern, rising Bangladesh—an indefatigable force who delivered growth, infrastructure, and global visibility. To her opponents, she embodied authoritarian drift, increasingly intolerant of dissent and insulated from the street’s anger. But even in a political landscape defined by sharp divides, few could have imagined the extraordinary twist that would one day place her in the dock of the very tribunal she once created. When the International Crimes Tribunal pronounced the death sentence against the 77-year-old former prime minister in absentia, it marked one of the most dramatic chapters in South Asia’s contemporary politics and sealed a stunning reversal of political fate for the world’s longest-serving female head of government.
Hasina’s trajectory was never ordinary, born as she was into the family that would define Bangladesh’s very identity. Born on September 28, 1947, in Tungipara in the then East Pakistan, she was the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman—the revered Bangabandhu, who led Bangladesh to independence in 1971 with India’s crucial support. She studied Bengali literature at Dhaka University and was deeply involved in student politics, laying the foundation for a lifelong engagement with public life. In 1968, she married nuclear scientist M. A. Wazed Miah, whose quiet scholarly world stood in sharp contrast to the turbulence that would shape her political destiny. Together they raised two children, Sajeeb Wazed Joy and Saima Wazed Putul, and remained a steady pair until Wazed’s passing in 2009.
The devastating August 1975 military coup altered the arc of her life permanently. In a matter of hours, her father, mother, brothers, and several family members were assassinated. She and her sister Rehana survived only because they were abroad. India, under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, offered her asylum, a gesture that forged a political affinity that would endure for decades. In 1981, Hasina returned to Bangladesh and, despite the personal tragedy and political uncertainty, was elected president of the Awami League in absentia, emerging as a formidable force in a nation grappling with authoritarian rule, military interventions, and fragile democratic experiments.
Her political battles were often personified through her long, turbulent rivalry with Khaleda Zia, widow of slain president Ziaur Rahman. The two leaders, dubbed the “Battling Begums,” dominated Bangladesh’s political imagination for over three decades. Their conflict, alternately ideological and personal, defined the country’s democratic cycles, street agitations, and elections. Hasina first became prime minister in 1996, lost power in 2001, and returned overwhelmingly in 2008. What followed was an era of political dominance unprecedented in the country’s history. The Awami League swept elections in 2008, retained power in 2014 in polls boycotted by Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party, and again won in 2018. Under Hasina, Bangladesh recorded strong economic growth, major infrastructure projects such as the Padma Bridge, improvements in social indices, and a booming garment industry that turned the country into a global export powerhouse.
But the successes were shadowed by deepening accusations of democratic erosion. Civil society groups, rights organisations, and international observers documented a pattern of media restrictions, arrests of opposition leaders, enforced disappearances, and growing impunity for security agencies. The government’s intolerance for dissent became especially visible in moments of unrest. It was the 2024 student-led demonstrations—initially triggered by anger over job quotas favouring families of independence war veterans—that became the tipping point. What began as a youth movement rapidly morphed into a nationwide uprising fueled by frustration with authoritarian governance, rising inequality, and a widening disconnect between rulers and the ruled. The government responded with a sweeping crackdown that resulted in spirals of violence. A UN rights office later estimated that as many as 1,400 people were killed between July 15 and August 15 during what came to be known as the July Uprising.
By August 5, 2024, the pressure became unsustainable. Hasina was ousted and fled to India. The interim government led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus moved swiftly to restore institutional credibility, including reconstituting the International Crimes Tribunal—ironically, the very court Hasina had revived to try 1971 war criminals. On October 17 that year, ICT-BD issued arrest warrants against Hasina and 45 others, including senior Awami League leaders, accusing them of crimes against humanity during the crackdown. Investigations accelerated, and by February 2025, a UN fact-finding mission added global urgency by highlighting the scale of casualties. The trial formally opened on June 1, 2025, with prosecutors describing the actions of Hasina’s government as a coordinated and systematic assault on unarmed civilians. Proceedings continued in her absence, with the tribunal appointing former Supreme Court judge A. Y. Moshiuzzaman as amicus curiae to ensure representation.
In July 2025, Hasina was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for contempt of court, followed by formal indictments on five counts of crimes against humanity. The tribunal began the trial in absentia on August 3, hearing testimonies, state evidence, and documentation of state violence. After concluding hearings on October 23, it set November 17 as the date for its verdict. When the day arrived, ICT-BD pronounced the death sentence against Hasina and her former home minister, Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal. Former police chief Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun, who turned state witness, received a five-year prison term.
The verdict capped fifteen months of political upheaval, legal drama, and national soul-searching. For Hasina—once hailed as the “Iron Lady” of Bangladesh, the daughter of the nation’s founding father, and the steward of its economic rise—the sentence is an extraordinary fall, shaped by the inexorable logic of power, protest, and political accountability. Now living in exile in India, she watches from across the border as the country she shaped, defended, and ruled with an unyielding hand grapples with its own reckoning. Bangladesh today stands at a crossroads—seeking justice for past violence while navigating the fragile terrain of democratic renewal. Hasina’s rise and fall serve as both a reminder of the perilous volatility of South Asian politics and a testament to the complex legacies left behind by leaders who hold power for too long. Whether history ultimately views her as a visionary builder, a stubborn authoritarian, or a tragic figure undone by her own choices will depend on how Bangladesh writes the next chapter of its own story.
