Sheikh Hasina Flees to India After Resignation.
After hundreds of anti-government riots that lasted for weeks, Sheikh Hasina quit and left the country.
Hasina, 76, resigned on Monday after the worst political crisis of her 15 years in power turned student-led protests against a quota system for government jobs into widespread calls for her removal.
Hasina and her sister fled to India in an army helicopter as tens of thousands of people surrounded government offices and residences in the capital, Dhaka.
General Waker-Uz-Zaman, the head of the Bangladeshi army, made the vague announcement that an interim government would run the 170 million-person nation.
After her Awami League party won the elections in 1996, Hasina was elected prime minister for the first time. She returned to power in 2009, contributing to impressive economic growth while becoming increasingly autocratic and repressing free speech, dissent, and opposition in Bangladesh, the eighth-most populous nation in the world with 170 million people.
But she was accused of becoming a hardline leader and cracking down on dissent. Her 15-year rule is also known for human rights violations. The United States placed sanctions on the elite Rapid Action Battalion, linked to disappearances and extrajudicial killings. Hasina wins a fourth straight term in elections boycotted by the opposition in 2024.
