Dhaka/New Delhi, Aug 5 (UNI): An Army coup in troubled Bangladesh on Monday forced Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to step down and leave the country as marauding quota protesters stormed her official residence in the morning.
The beleaguered Awami League leader’s military plane stopped in Delhi around 5.30 pm, en route to a foreign destination, said media reports.
The violence-hit nation’s Army chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman, to whom the 76-year-old PM submitted her resignation, addressed the nation and announced the formation of interim government and ruled declaration of a state of emergency in the country, reports said.
“After holding a fruitful discussion with all political parties, we have decided to form an interim government,” the Army chief was quoted as saying in the Dhaka Tribune.
He called for a halt to all violence in the name of protest and promised that the new government would ensure justice for all the deaths that took place during the Anti-Discriminatory Student Movement, it said.
“Have faith in the army. We will accept all your demands,” the Army chief said, after the Army and various political leaders and prominent people held a meeting with President Mohammed Shahabuddin, reported Dhaka Tribune.
He said: “The Army will not fire. Police won’t shoot either. We will decide by tonight. But it may take a couple of days to execute.”
Hasina’s forced exile followed a 45-minute ultimatum given to her by the Army chief, a day after clashes killed nearly 100 people across the country, according to media reports.
On Monday, protesters stormed the PM’s official residence, Gono Bhaban, shouting slogans and waving flags, media reports said.
The PM departed from her residence on Monday afternoon on a military helicopter and carried on her further journey on a military plane, with a stop-over in New Delhi, media reports said. She was accompanied by her younger sister, Sheikh Rehana, as they left for a “safer place”, the report said.
Somoy News TV claimed Sheikh Hasina left the country after submitting her resignation to the country’s Army Chief.
Hasina, took office for her fourth straight five-year term as the country’s Prime Minister in January this year after her ruling Bangladesh Awami League (AL) party won a landslide victory in the parliamentary elections.
Over 300 people have died in the unrest, making this one of the deadliest periods of civil unrest in Bangladesh’s history, said media reports.
The quota unrest began in June 2024 when the High Court reinstated a 30 per cent quota for the descendants of freedom fighters from the 1971 war of independence, reversing a 2018 decision that had abolished such quotas.
