Exclusive | Ranil Wickremesinghe to Firstpost: ‘Hasina should remain in India’

In an exclusive interview to Firstpost Managing Editor Palki Sharma, Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe said former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina should remain in India. Hasina fled Bangladesh in early August in the wake of over a month-long youth agitation that demanded her ouster from power, barely seven months after she won the parliamentary election.

“As far as Sheikh Hasina is concerned, many leaders leave their country and go live abroad, if she is out of the country — let her be out of the country. We all want Bangladesh to focus on normalcy,” Wickremesinghe said when asked to comment on demands to extradite Hasina from India to Bangladesh.

Sheikh Hasina’s stay in India has become a point of contention between New Delhi and Dhaka. Some of the advisors of the interim government of Bangladesh headed by Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus have spoken in public about extraditing Hasina.

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The issue has become emotive in Bangladesh especially when the country has seen a rise in anti-India sentiments in recent months.

When Wikremesinghe was asked about what advice he would give to India and Bangladesh to navigate this period, he said, “First is to get stability into Bangladesh — first give people confidence — as far as Sheikh Hasina is concerned, these are political issues. It has to be decided in such a manner… Many leaders leave their country and go abroad. They then live abroad. What I would give priority to is [to ensure] Bangladesh remains stable.”

“If Sheikh Hasina is out of the country, let her be out of the country. I think stability has to come quickly. The army may be necessary. We all want Bangladesh [to] focus on normalcy and on getting people to decide how [they] should lead the country,” he said.

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Wickremesinghe became Sri Lanka’s president under a similar situation when the then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was forced to quit by a people’s agitation in 2022. Wickremesinghe became the president as a compromise and to pave the path for an economically secure Sri Lanka. He faces an electoral test on Saturday, when Sri Lanka votes in the presidential election.