If there is a request to hand over Sheikh Hasina to Bangladesh, what can India do?

Shub Jyoti Ghosh

Post, BBC News Bangla, Delhi

Former Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina has been living in India since the fall of her government.

The new government of Bangladesh has not yet formally demanded her return, but Sheikh Hasina's political opponent Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party has asked India to hand over Sheikh Hasina to Bangladesh.

However, observers and analysts in Delhi say that despite several cases against Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh, the chances of her extradition under the extradition treaty between the two countries are slim.

Asked what India would do if the Bangladesh government requested Sheikh Hasina's extradition, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said, "If we talk about extradition, it is completely is a hypothetical question and in such a situation no hypothetical question can be answered.'

While refraining from answering the question for now, Indian officials have not ruled out the possibility that such a request could come from Dhaka sooner or later.

The top leadership of Bangladesh's interim government has also indicated that the issue will not remain 'hypothetical' for long.

Bangladesh's foreign affairs advisor M. Tawheed said in an interview to Reuters last week, "The Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Law will decide based on the cases filed against Sheikh Hasina whether to request her extradition from India." will be done or not and in case of request it will be necessary to hand them over to Bangladesh under the extradition treaty between the two countries.

What can India do if an extradition request comes from Bangladesh? The fact is that even Dhaka knows very well that it will not be easy to bring back Sheikh Hasina despite the extradition request under this agreement.

                                    In 2015, the ULFA leader was extradited to India under a deal

Sheikh Hasina has been one of India's trusted and loyal friends for the past 50 years and it can be assumed without hesitation that India will not hand her over to Bangladesh to face trial and punishment. May have to.

There are several conditions or provisions in this agreement between the two countries, on the basis of which India can refuse the extradition of Sheikh Hasina. Not only this, the application can also be kept pending for a long time on the basis of legal complications.

An important provision of the agreement states that the request may be rejected if the charges against the person to be extradited are of a political nature.

Accordingly, extradition can be refused in such cases if an offense is of 'political connection'.

But the list of non-political crimes is long and includes crimes like murder, kidnapping, bombings and terrorism.

The cases filed against Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh in the last two weeks include cases of murder and mass murder, as well as various charges of kidnapping and torture, which, on the face of it, can be dismissed as political. It is difficult.

Also, in 2016, the original agreement was amended to add a clause that made the transfer process much easier. The purpose of this change was to hand over fugitives quickly and easily.

Section 10(3) of the amended treaty states that when requesting the extradition of an accused person, the country concerned need not present any evidence in relation to the charges and only the production of an arrest warrant from the relevant court. Valid application will be considered.

This means that if the court issues an arrest warrant against Sheikh Hasina in any case in Bangladesh, the Bangladeshi government can request her extradition from India only on that basis.

However, there are several clauses in the treaty that give the country concerned the right to reject an extradition request.

For example, if there is a case pending against the person in the country from which extradition is requested, the request may be rejected based on that case.

However, this does not apply in the case of Sheikh Hasina. This is because there is neither a case pending against him in India nor any possibility of it in the near future.

Under another section, if the country concerned feels that all the charges against a person have not been made 'in the interest of justice and in good faith', it has the right to reject the extradition request. Got it.

If all such charges relate to social offenses which do not come under the ambit of criminal law, then the application may also be rejected.

Analysts in Delhi say that if India actually receives Sheikh Hasina's extradition request, it can use this clause to reject the request.

Speaking to BBC Bangla, Smriti Patnaik, a senior fellow at strategic think tank ISDA, said, 'First of all, it is important to say that I do not think that the interim government of Bangladesh has formally extradited Sheikh Hasina from India. Will request.'

In his opinion, it is likely to cause bitterness in the relations between the two countries and in the current critical situation of Bangladesh, no government that has come to power recently will take such a risk.

Smriti says that 'if the request is nevertheless received, India will have enough evidence to prove that the request was made for political motives'.

He said that 'For example, the way former education minister Dipo Mani was slapped during his court appearance on Tuesday and the way former industrial adviser Salman F Rehman or former law minister Aneesul Haq were humiliated in the court. Who will guarantee that this will not happen in Sheikh Hasina's case?

According to Smriti, in simple words, India can easily give examples of these incidents and say that it does not think that Sheikh Hasina will get justice after a fair and impartial trial in Bangladesh and therefore she cannot be extradited.

According to most observers in Delhi, India can reject the extradition request with the help of the section which states that the charges are 'prejudicial to the interest and expediency of the judicial process'.

Some analysts believe that if India actually receives Sheikh Hasina's extradition request, Delhi may put it on hold for a long time instead of rejecting it outright.

India's former top diplomat TCA Raghavan says that the way India sheltered Sheikh Hasina during the crisis, that is its policy. Pushing them into a major crisis cannot be an option for India.

He believes that finding a way or an argument to reject the extradition request is not a big problem.

Raghavan says, 'It must be remembered that if we do not support Sheikh Hasina at this time, the leaders of any friendly country in the world will not trust India in the future.'

The Indian government's 'standing up' to Sheikh Hasina could help keep her extradition request pending indefinitely.

According to him, this is because there are various legal loopholes or loopholes in such agreements that can help legal experts keep an application pending for months or years.

Analysts say that if the extradition request is received, India will follow the same path in the case of Sheikh Hasina.

India's former foreign secretary and former high commissioner in Dhaka, Panak Ranjan Chakraborty, has said that extradition requests under such an agreement sometimes take several years to be decided.

Chakraborty told BBC Bangla, 'India has been trying to extradite Pakistani-American Tahur Hussain Rana, the main suspect in the Mumbai attacks since 2008, while there is an extradition treaty between India and the US since 1997.

In such a situation, he should have come to India by now, but recently on August 15, a court in California ordered Rana's extradition to India. 16 years have passed, now let's see how much longer it will take to bring him here.'

There is no reason to believe that if any extradition request for Sheikh Hasina is received, it will be decided in a few days or months.

Before this, if Hasina can leave India and seek asylum in a third country and the Indian government officials still do not rule out this possibility, there is no question of accepting such a request or taking any decision based on it.

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#India #Bangladesh #Courts