Yunus Says He Asked Modi to Restrain Hasina From Making Political Statements But Plea Wasn't Heard

New Delhi: Bangladesh interim government head Muhammad Yunus on Wednesday (June 11) said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi didn’t pay heed to his request to restrain former Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina from making political statements while she is in India.

“When I had a chance to talk to Prime Minister Modi, I simply said you want to host her, I cannot force you to abandon that policy. But please help us in making sure she doesn’t speak to Bangladeshi people the way she is doing,” said Yunus, while speaking at Chatham House in London, reported Hindustan Times.

“No. Modi’s answer [and] I quote, he said it is the social media, we cannot control it. What can you say? This is an explosive situation, you can’t just walk away by saying this is social media. This is what is still going on,” Yunus added, when asked by the moderator if India was doing what he had asked.

Yunus said that the “whole of Bangladesh” gets very angry whenever Hasina announces that she will speak, on a date and time.

Yunus said that his country will continue its efforts to seek the extradition of Hasina following her indictment by Bangladesh’s international crimes tribunal.

The International Crimes Tribunal has started the trial process, they sent notices to Hasina for all the crimes she has committed…So, they have to respond to the notices. This is a legal notice, so we have to go to the Interpol and all the other things that happen through that. This is the process that we are following, we want it to be very legal, very proper,” said Yunus.

He added that while it is his desire to build the “best of relationships with India”, the efforts are being thwarted by “fake news in the Indian press”.

“We want to build the best of relationships with India, it’s our neighbour. We don’t want to have any kind of basic problem with them. But somehow things go wrong every time because of all the fake news coming from the Indian press and many people say it has connections with policy-makers at the top and so on. This is what makes Bangladesh very jittery, very angry. We try to get over this anger but…the whole barrage of things keep happening in cyberspace, we can’t get away from that,” said Yunus.

Former prime minister Hasina, accompanied by her sister, Sheikh Rehana, had departed for India on August 5 last year aboard a special flight provided by the Bangladesh army. Her departure occurred with less than an hour’s notice as protesters converged on the prime minister’s office, marking the climax of the student-led movement that ended 15 years of Awami League rule.

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