Earlier, Indian students who were studying in various institutions in Bangladesh, were also evacuated. File
| Photo Credit: PTI
With violence in Bangladesh continuing to be a concern, India pulled out “non-essential” staff and the families of diplomats at the Indian High Commission in Dhaka on Wednesday. Sources said that their return was on a “voluntary basis”, over commercial flights to Delhi. However, the Indian High Commission in Dhaka in Consulates at Chittagong, Rajshahi, Khulna and Sylhet were all fully operational, they stressed, adding that there were no plans at present to evacuate the posts.
“All diplomats remain at the High Commission. The High Commission remains functional,” the sources said, urging Indian nationals in Bangladesh to use the High Commission’s specially set up helplines (+8801958383679, +8801958383680 and +8801937400591).
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While Dhaka’s Shahjalal airport was closed on Monday, flights are operational now. Air India and Indigo have been organising special flights to bring back Indians since August 6 and resumed normal operations on Wednesday, although rail services between the two countries remained disrupted.
In Parliament on Tuesday, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said that there were an estimated 19,000 Indian nationals in Bangladesh, of which about 9,000 were students, most of whom returned in July, when the protests had turned violent.
India continued to “wait and watch” on the situation in Bangladesh for another day after Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was forced to resign and flee the country for India, along with her sister, after angry protesters marched towards her official home on Monday. There was no update on Wednesday on Ms. Hasina’s plans to leave for another country, as she had earlier hoped, with a request to the United Kingdom for asylum unlikely to be accepted.
Ms. Hasina has made no comment since arriving at the Hindon airbase on the outskirts of Delhi, but her U.S.-based son Sajeeb Wazed ‘Joy’ has told a number of media outlets that she may be in India for an extended period.
“Sheikh Hasina is well and now in Delhi. My sister is with her. My sister lives in Delhi… She is well, but very upset,” he told German television Deutsche Welle on Wednesday, referring to Ms. Hasina’s daughter Saima Wazed who is the Regional Director for the World Health Organisation and has been based in Delhi for some months.
“She is saddened that her father (Sheikh Mujibur Rahman) gave his life for the country, and the entire family lost their lives. The country for which she was imprisoned, worked so hard, and made so much progress, that the people of this country would insult her in this way, expel her, and go on to attack her, was something none of us could have imagined,” Mr. Wazed said, also dismissing reports that Ms. Hasina wanted “asylum”, but said she might stay with her family members based in the U.S., the U.K. and India.
Meanwhile in a sign of the political changes in the country, the Bangladesh High Commission in New Delhi decided to “postpone” an annual event to observe a “National Mourning Day” on August 15 that would have marked the 49th anniversary of the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founder of Bangladesh. The High Commission informed invitees on Tuesday that the plan to hold the memorial service and a discussion on “Bangabandhu: An Epitome of Peace and Humanity” had been “postponed due to unavoidable circumstances”.
The Bangladesh High Commission did not respond to requests on the reasons for the postponement and whether the event would be rescheduled.
(With inputs from Jagriti Chandra)
