Sheikh Hasina opens up on communal violence in Bangladesh, says ‘broader pattern allowed to flourish with impunity’

Sheikh Hasina, former Prime Minister of Bangladesh who fled to India after students-led protests against her, has launched a scathing attack on the Muhammad Yunus-led interim government of country amid multiple communal violence incidents. Speaking with NDTV in an exclusive interview, Sheikh Hasina said that the killing of Dipu Chandra Das was not an isolated incident, but a “broader pattern of communal violence that has been allowed to flourish with impunity.”

“Violence in the name of religion has no place in Bangladesh, yet such acts have become disturbingly frequent….The perpetrators of these horrific acts of religious violence have never been prosecuted, and their victims have been denied justice, while Yunus himself continues to deny the clearly religious motivations behind these acts. This erosion of security threatens not only minorities, but the secular and democratic foundations of Bangladesh itself,” she was quoted as saying by the media house.

At least 12 people have been arrested for their alleged involvement in the murder of Das. His family later alleged that Dipu Das was killed over a factory dispute, and not because he made a blasphemous remark.

According to a spokesman of the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council, seven persons from the Hindu community have died since December. The council, however, did not provide the details of two victims.

The Hindu population in Bangladesh has been affected by a series of incidents against minority communities in the country after the ouster of then-prime minister Sheikh Hasina in August, 2024. As of the 2022 census, approximately 13.13 million Hindus reside in Bangladesh, constituting about 7.95 per cent of the total population.

Attacking the Yunus government further, Sheikh Hasina said that radical Islamic extremism is flourishing under the current regime. “Under Yunus, convicted terrorists have been released from prison, extremist groups have been rehabilitated into political relevance, and violence against minorities and women has been normalised,” she told in her interview.

“his hostility is being manufactured by extremists who the Yunus regime has emboldened. These are the same actors who marched on the Indian embassy and attacked our media offices, who attack minorities with impunity, and who forced my family and me to flee for our lives. Yunus has placed such figures in positions of power and released convicted terrorists from prison,” she had said in an interview to ANI.