Bangladesh police fire tear gas as Hasina supporters protest
A bus driver died in Faridpur and a police vehicle was torched in Gopalganj as the banned Awami League's student wing rallied for her return from India.
Police in Bangladesh fired tear gas and rubber bullets at supporters of deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina as nationwide protests demanding her return from exile in India turned violent, with at least one person killed.
A 60-year-old bus driver died of smoke inhalation in the city of Faridpur after people set fire to his passenger vehicle early on Tuesday, the BBC reported. In Gopalganj district, a police vehicle was set on fire as the banned student wing of Hasina's Awami League, the Bangladesh Chhatra League, clashed with security forces.
About 200 protesters briefly blocked traffic on the Padma bridge, the 6.2km crossing that links Dhaka to the south-west. Burning tyres blocked roads elsewhere. Bangladeshi local media reported dozens of crude bombs exploding in Dhaka and other areas over the past few days, the BBC said.
The protests began a day after Hasina, 79, said she had asked the Bangladesh High Commission in New Delhi for a passport so she could return in December. She fled to India on 5 August 2024 after weeks of student-led protests ended her 15-year rule. The Awami League was banned after she left and was barred from February's general election.
Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed said the government would not allow any attempt to create instability "through any conspiracy within the country from across the border", an apparent reference to India. A senior leader of the Chhatra League, speaking from exile, said its supporters were not responsible for the violence and blamed "unknown miscreants".
A special tribunal sentenced Hasina to death in absentia in November 2025 for crimes against humanity over the crackdown on the 2024 protests, in which the United Nations estimated up to 1,400 people were killed, most by security forces' gunfire. She has called the trial "biased and politically motivated" and a "jurisprudential joke".
The government says she will not be issued a passport and has called her a terrorist. Junior foreign affairs minister Humaiun Kobir said Dhaka wants her handed over under an extradition treaty with India. India has said the request is under review. State prosecutor Md Aminul Islam said the death sentence would be carried out if she returned, and that she had missed the deadline to appeal.
Supreme Court lawyer Ahsanul Karim told the Bangkok Post that Hasina does not need a passport to enter the country, and would be arrested as soon as she did. Mohammad Jalal Uddin Sikder, a political science professor at Dhaka's North South University, told the Bangkok Post the pledge was "a ploy to rally her party workers" and said he did not expect her to return.
How the reports differ
The BBC led with the street violence: the tear gas in Gopalganj, the death of the bus driver in Faridpur, the Padma bridge blockade, and the United Nations' estimate of up to 1,400 killed in the 2024 crackdown. The Bangkok Post led instead with the political dispute over her return, the government's challenge to seek extradition, and its own interviews with analysts and the prosecutor who secured the conviction; it gave her age and the exact date she fled. The BBC quoted a Chhatra League leader denying that its supporters caused the violence, while the Bangkok Post said police blamed the Awami League for a string of petrol bomb and arson attacks. UPI carried the demonstrations as violent protests by Hasina supporters without the toll, the extradition dispute or the background the other two supplied.
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