New Delhi: Arriving in Delhi on a scheduled commercial flight from Dhaka in the early hours of Wednesday, Tanveer Khan appeared calm but uneasy. "We will face new challenges in the coming days," said Khan, who is in Delhi in connection with his work.
A native of Sylhet in Bangladesh, the Dhaka Uttara area resident said he didn't know what to believe of all that was being spread on news or social media. Khan arrived in Delhi on an Air India flight that landed at 1 am. It was not immediately known how many passengers were on the flight.
On Tuesday, Air India cancelled its morning flight to Dhaka but operated the evening one. The plane then returned to Delhi around 1 am with passengers from the Bangladesh capital. A special Air India flight carrying 205 people, including six infants, from Dhaka arrived in New Delhi on Wednesday morning.
"Bangladesh has calmed down but we will face new challenges in the coming days. We don't know the future but we hope something good will come," Khan said. Embattled leader Sheikh Hasina resigned as prime minister and landed at the Hindon airbase near Delhi on Monday following unprecedented anti-government protests.
Thousands of protesters looted and vandalised Hasina's official residence in Dhaka, smashed a statue of her father Mujibur Rahman and set offices of her party on fire as they celebrated her departure.
The protests, which began last month initially with the demand to end a quota system that reserved 30 per cent of government jobs for families of veterans who fought in Bangladesh's 1971 War of Independence, later turned into anti-government demonstrations.
Jubilant crowds took to the streets around the country after Army Chief General Waqar-uz-Zaman announced Hasina's resignation. "We loved her (Hasina) because of her work and she really did great things in Bangladesh," Khan said. Her comments on the jobs quota changed the situation, he said.
Asked about reports of attacks on members of minority communities, Khan said, "I have several friends (from the minority community) in Barisal and I have not heard that they were being beaten up or their houses being burnt."
"What we see in the media, we cannot believe what is completely right or what is wrong," he added. Kazi Abdullah Hakim, another passenger on the scheduled commercial flight, interacted with PTI Videos at the Indira Gandhi International Airport.
"I have come from Bangladesh, I have some work here. Some medical treatment, and also to meet friends," he said. "The situation is fine (now), it will be OK soon," Hakim claimed when asked about developments after Hasina's resignation.
Foreign affairs experts and some former ambassadors who had served as India's envoy in Dhaka said on Monday that the next few days would be critical for Bangladesh and one didn't know when things would settle in the wake of the political crisis gripping the country.
Bangladesh President Mohammed Shahabuddin dissolved Parliament on Tuesday and appointed Nobel laureate Mohammad Yunus as head of an interim government.
