New Delhi: Former Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina's travel plans have hit a roadblock due to certain "uncertainties" and she is unlikely to move out of India for the next couple of days, people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.
Hasina, who landed at the Hindon airbase on Monday hours after resigning as prime minister, was shifted to an unspecified location that has been put under tight security, they said. She was set to travel to London from India but is now contemplating other options after the British government indicated she may not get legal protection in the UK against any possible investigation, they said.
The Awami League leader had planned to travel to London through India and her aides informed Indian authorities about it before she landed in Hindon, the people cited above said. In a statement, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said in London on Monday that Bangladesh has seen unprecedented levels of violence and tragic loss of life in the last few weeks and people of the country "deserve a full and independent UN-led investigation into the events".
While saying that Hasina's travel plans have hit certain issues and she may stay in the country for the next couple of days, the people in the know also described the situation as dynamic with no definitive path or clarity on the matter. Hasina, 76, who ruled the South Asian with an iron fist for 15 years, resigned as the prime minister following massive protests that initially began as an agitation against a job quota scheme but weeks later morphed into a mass movement demanding her ouster from power.
The controversial quota system provided for 30 per cent reservations in civil services jobs for the families of veterans who fought the 1971 liberation war. Hasina's Awami League retained power in the parliamentary election in January that was boycotted by the opposition parties. Hasina, accompanied by her sister Sheikh Rehana, had left her official residence 'Ganabhavan' in a military chopper to an airbase, the sources said. From the airbase, she flew into Hindon in a C-130 military transport aircraft of the Bangladesh Air Force, they said.
