Bangladesh's foreign ministry said on Sunday that Prime Minister Tarique Rahman will not travel to India until New Delhi extradites former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, pushing back on reports that a visit was being planned for the coming week. Foreign ministry official A.K.M. Shahidul Karim told reporters that a proper environment needs to exist before any such trip can happen, and that Dhaka has urged Indian authorities to move faster on the extradition request.
Hasina fled to India in 2024 as anti-government protests brought down her administration, and she has remained there since. Bangladesh's courts have since convicted her of crimes against humanity, a charge that carries the death penalty, and Dhaka has repeatedly asked India to send her back to face those proceedings. India has said only that the request is under examination, without setting out a timeline.
Rahman took office as prime minister in February and has visited Malaysia and China since then, a sequence that breaks with the usual pattern of Bangladeshi leaders making India their first stop abroad. That choice, paired with Sunday's statement, signals how far ties between the two neighbours have drifted since Hasina's government fell.
The extradition standoff leaves both governments without an easy way forward. Bangladesh wants Hasina back before normalising high level contact, while India has given no public sign of when, or whether, it will act on the request, leaving a bilateral relationship that once ran on regular leader level visits largely on hold.