Former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina told Reuters on Wednesday that she plans to stay in India, where she is in exile.

While Hasina expressed a desire to eventually return to Bangladesh, she said that it would only happen under certain conditions.

“I would of course love to go home, so long as the government there was legitimate, the constitution was being upheld, and law and order genuinely prevailed,” she told Reuters in an interview.

The ousted leader also warned that millions of her supporters will boycott the upcoming general election in Bangladesh unless her party, the Awami League, is allowed to participate, Reuters reported.

Hasina had resigned as the prime minister and fled to India on August 5, 2024, after several weeks of widespread student-led protests against her government. She had been in power for 16 years.

Nobel laureate economist Muhammad Yunus took over as the head of Bangladesh’s interim government on August 8, 2024.

The country is scheduled to hold its first elections since her ouster in February 2026.

She called the decision to bar the Awami League from contesting the 2026 polls unjust and warned that it could undermine the legitimacy of the vote.

“The next government must have electoral legitimacy,” she said. “Millions of people support the Awami League, so as things stand, they will not vote. You cannot disenfranchise millions of people if you want a political system that works.”

In May, Bangladesh’s interim government banned all activities of the Awami League, including its online platforms, under the country’s anti-terrorism act.

Hasina, who is facing charges of crimes against humanity related to the crackdown on protesters during the 2024 agitation against her government, dismissed the ongoing trial against her as a “politically motivated charade”.

“They’ve been brought by kangaroo courts, with guilty verdicts a foregone conclusion,” she told Reuters. “I was mostly denied prior notice or any meaningful opportunity to defend myself.”

In an interview to AFP on Wednesday, Hasina described the trial a “jurisprudential joke” and added that she believed a guilty verdict was “preordained”.

The interim government has said it will investigate Hasina in connection with allegations that she ordered the killings and enforced disappearances of dissidents during the public uprising against her regime in July and August 2024. A total of 51 cases have been filed against her, including 42 for murder. Two warrants for her arrest have also been issued.

Of the 1,400 killed and thousands injured between July 1, 2024, and August 15, 2024, the vast majority were shot by Bangladesh’s security forces, a United Nations report said in February. Of these, 12% to 13% killed were children.

In July, she was indicted by the country’s International Crimes Tribunal for crimes against humanity allegedly committed during the anti-government protests.

The court’s verdict on the matter is scheduled for November 13, AFP reported.

Hasina has denied the allegations and repeatedly claimed that she is being politically persecuted.

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