Bangladesh is not anyone's backyard

So before you stand on our soil and preach brotherhood, here is a simple ask. Act like a brother first. Then talk.

Let me start with the woman in Delhi.

In November, a Bangladeshi court convicted Sheikh Hasina of crimes against humanity and sentenced her to death for the crackdown that killed an estimated 1,400 people last year. She is a fugitive from that verdict. And she is living in India. Bangladesh sent a formal extradition request under our treaty. India's answer was to acknowledge the letter and do nothing.

She calls the trial rigged. She is welcome to make that case. But you do not get to shelter a death-sentenced former ruler from your neighbor and then send an envoy to that same neighbor to talk about how we are all one big family. Pick one.

Now let me show you the pattern, with numbers, because this is not just emotion. This is receipts.

Start with the electricity in your wall.

In 2017, under Hasina, Bangladesh signed a 25-year deal to buy power from Adani's Godda plant in Jharkhand. This year our own government's review committee reported what that deal actually was. Godda charged us a 39.7% premium over its nearest private competitor. It had the steepest cost escalation of any electricity we import from India. And it passed India's own corporate taxes onto Bangladeshi electricity bills, which is not how these contracts are supposed to work anywhere. The committee found serious anomalies in how the contract was even awarded.

That single plant was about 9% of our entire power supply. So watch what happened when we fell behind on payments during a foreign exchange crisis. Adani did not behave like a friend. In October 2024 they abruptly cut our supply roughly in half, which forced us to burn expensive fuel oil just to keep the lights on, and then dragged us into arbitration in Singapore over around 485 million dollars.

That is what dependency looks like. Not partnership. A switch, and someone else's hand on it.

Now trade.

In the last fiscal year our trade deficit with India hit 7.86 billion dollars. We exported about 1.76 billion to them. We imported about 9.62 billion from them. That number came from our own Industries Minister in Parliament, not from me. India gets deep access to our market, our consumers, our demand. We get a wall.

And when we try to move our own goods through the region, the access vanishes. In April last year India withdrew the transshipment facility that let our exporters reach other countries through Indian routes. One decision, and our shippers ate a loss estimated around 2,000 crore taka. When the routes help India, they are open. When they help us, suddenly there is congestion, there is a problem, there is a delay.

Then the border. This is the part I cannot forgive.

By the count of our own rights groups: 34 Bangladeshis were killed by India's Border Security Force in 2025. That is the worst in five years. It was 30 in 2024. 31 in 2023. More than 600 of our people since 2009. Between 2000 and 2020 alone, over 1,200. At least 27 of the dead since 2009 were children.

Put names to it. Felani, 15, shot on the barbed wire in 2011, her body left hanging there for hours. Swarna Das, 13, shot in 2024. Jayanta Kumar Singh, 15, shot a few weeks after her.

And here is the number that should end every speech about friendship. Zero. Not one BSF soldier has ever been convicted for any of these killings. The one case that actually reached trial, Felani's, ended in acquittal. This does not happen on India's border with Pakistan. It happens on ours. Same sky, same air, and our children keep coming home in coffins.

Water.

Teesta has been "almost resolved" for more than fourteen years. Water is not a symbol. It is farming, food, and survival for millions in our north. Fourteen years a friend cannot finish a water agreement, but a diplomat can finish a speech about unity in fourteen minutes.

And then there is the war that runs on screens.

After Hasina fell, Indian outlets and India-run accounts flooded the internet with fake atrocity stories about Bangladesh. I am not guessing at this. Fact-checkers documented it claim by claim. Rumor Scanner counted 72 Indian outlets pushing 137 false reports about us in 2024 alone, roughly one fresh lie every two and a half days, and found that about 72% of the accounts spreading it were based in India.

The lies were specific and ugly. A burning house passed off as cricketer Liton Das's home, supposedly attacked for being Hindu: false. A temple in Chattogram "set on fire": the footage was actually from Bengaluru, inside India. A fake resignation letter put in Hasina's mouth. A Muslim man's video relabeled as a Hindu victim. And these were not fringe pages. Republic Bangla, Republic TV, Zee, Aaj Tak, Hindustan Times.

Here is the part most people miss. This is not even really about us. The same Indian media machine lies to its own people every day. BOOM, an Indian fact-checking outlet, ran 1,280 fact-checks in 2024 and caught Indian mainstream media misreporting in at least 51 of them, including AI voice clones aired as real politicians. The same machine that invents temples burning in Chattogram also bulldozed a slum in Ghaziabad while calling the residents "Bangladeshi infiltrators," until Indian fact-checkers found they were simply migrant workers from Uttar Pradesh. A press culture that lies to its own citizens will not lose a second of sleep lying about its neighbor. We are just the more convenient villain.

And the daily insult under all of it. "Same air, same sky," yet an ordinary Bangladeshi still needs a visa to set foot in India, and after last year India slashed even those, including the medical visas families depended on to get treatment. Do not sell me one people while the gate stays locked for mine.

Here is what I actually believe.

Bangladesh should have a good relationship with India. We should also be free to deal with China, Pakistan, Turkey, the Gulf, Japan, the US, anyone who serves our interest. That is what sovereignty is. We do not need anyone's permission to trade, to build, or to choose our partners.

So no. I will not clap because a diplomat brought flowers and a good line.

I will clap when the killing at the border stops and someone is finally held responsible.

I will clap when we are not overpaying 40% for power with the switch in someone else's hand.

I will clap when Teesta is signed.

I will clap when a convicted fugitive is handed back instead of hosted in Delhi.

I will clap when "1.6 billion together" arrives with one single thing that treats us as equals instead of inventory.

Until then, keep the speech. Bangladesh is not anyone's backyard, anyone's market, or anyone's population statistic. It belongs to Bangladeshis.