Hasina seeks a new passport to go home in December; Dhaka says no and tells her to be extradited

Dhaka has refused to give Sheikh Hasina a new passport, a day after lawyers acting for the ousted prime minister asked the Bangladesh High Commission in New Delhi to renew her passport and national identity card so she can go home. Ministers say the only road back runs through extradition from India, a court and her death sentence.

The request was an email sent on Monday, November 9, by the London firm Matrix Chambers. It asked the mission to renew Hasina’s documents after their “reported revocation”. It did not say when or where she planned to travel. Hasina, who has been in India since she fled the mass uprising of August 2024, has vowed to return to Bangladesh in December.

“A passport is a state privilege”

Press minister Md Saidur Rahman said the High Commission could not verify the request. “There is no way for us to establish that the request was made on behalf of Sheikh Hasina,” he said, adding that the email carried no proof the firm was authorised to write for her. The mission has forwarded it to the foreign ministry in Dhaka.

A foreign ministry official, speaking without being named, said passports and ID cards are personal documents that a lawyer can seek only with the holder’s proper authorisation, and that a passport is a privilege of the state, not a right. The official added that missions normally issue a one-way travel pass for a repatriation or an extradition, and that Bangladesh would issue one only after India completes its legal process.

State Minister for Foreign Affairs Humaiun Kobir was blunter. “Bangladesh does not give passports to terrorists who kill thousands of people and flee,” he said. He called the application “utterly ridiculous”, criticised the law firm for representing her, and said Hasina should be extradited, surrender to a court and serve her sentence.

Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed said the government was reviewing the legal basis of the application, whether it followed due process and whether she has a right to apply at all. He said Dhaka had already written to India seeking her extradition. Md Aminul Islam, chief prosecutor in the death sentence case, called the application “nothing but political stunt” and said she would be executed if she returned.

How her papers were taken away

Her papers have been dismantled step by step. The interim government revoked her diplomatic (red) passport on August 22, 2024, and the immigration department carried out and announced the decision on January 7, 2025. She had surrendered her ordinary passport after becoming prime minister in 2009. On February 16, 2025, the Election Commission locked the ID cards of Hasina and nine members of her family, making them unusable for official purposes.

In November 2025 the International Crimes Tribunal in Dhaka sentenced her to death in absentia for crimes against humanity over the 2024 crackdown, in which the UN says more than 1,400 people were killed. She denies the charge. In an email to a news agency, she said she was fully aware she faced being hanged.

India’s position

Dhaka first asked for her extradition through a diplomatic note in December 2024 and renewed the request after the verdict. It says the request fits the 2013 India-Bangladesh extradition treaty, which excludes certain political offences but covers serious crimes such as murder, which Dhaka argues cannot automatically be treated as political.

New Delhi has said it is examining the requests. In April its foreign ministry said it wanted to engage constructively with the new government in Dhaka. Analysts expect India to keep sheltering her without helping her return or restoring her political standing.

Doubts about December

Outside observers doubt she can go anywhere. Jon Danilowicz, a former US diplomat, called the December pledge a bluff and said there was “zero chance” of a return. Zillur Rahman, an analyst, said the request is mainly about keeping her banned Awami League politically relevant. Ruhul Kabir Rizvi of the BNP dismissed the prospect of her return.

The politics at home are tense. Tarique Rahman’s party won the February elections from which the Awami League was barred, and his government says Hasina would get due legal process on return. Police said this month they had arrested 12 people for petrol bomb attacks, whom they described as members of the banned Awami League trying to spread panic, according to Dhaka police spokesman Md Akhtar Hossain.

What next

The foreign ministry in Dhaka will now examine the email. India has not said how it will answer the extradition request, and no date has been set for any decision. The next marker is December, when Hasina says she will return and Dhaka says she can come back only by extradition.