Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Monday said that ousted Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina getting the death penalty is a “very troubling” development.
Hasina, who fled to India after her ouster in August last year, was on Monday sentenced to death in absentia by a special tribunal in Bangladesh for “crimes against humanity”.
“Both domestically and abroad, I don’t believe in the death penalty. So I find that particularly dismaying,” Tharoor told reporters.
“Also, a trial in absentia where somebody doesn’t get a chance to defend themselves, explain themselves, and then you declare a death penalty, it seems to me – it’s not appropriate for me to comment on the internal matters of another country’s judiciary, but I must say, I cannot say that I find it a very positive development. It’s a very troubling development,” the former Minister of State for External Affairs said.
#WATCH | Delhi | On ousted Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina being convicted by a Bangladeshi Court, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor says, “Both domestically and abroad, I don’t believe in the death penalty… Trial in absentia, when somebody doesn’t get a chance to defend… pic.twitter.com/vksxisNrMK
— ANI (@ANI) November 17, 2025
The International Crimes Tribunal-Bangladesh (ICT-BD) sentenced Hasina and her former home minister, Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal, to death in absentia for “crimes against humanity” during last year’s student protests.
Commenting on the verdict, Sheikh Hasina, who is currently living in Delhi, denied the charges as “biased and politically motivated”. The 78-year-old said the judgment was made by a “rigged tribunal” established and presided over by an “unelected government with no democratic mandate”.
“In their distasteful call for the death penalty, they reveal the brazen and murderous intent of extremist figures within the interim government to remove Bangladesh’s last elected prime minister and to nullify the Awami League as a political force,” she said in a statement.
Hasina, whose Awami League party has been barred from contesting the elections scheduled to be held in February, said she was not afraid to face her “accusers” in a proper tribunal where the evidence can be weighed and tested fairly.
“That is why I have repeatedly challenged the interim government to bring these charges before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague,” she said.