Bangladesh Crisis | Former Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina flees to India: A look at leaders who sought asylum here

The ongoing crisis in Bangladesh took a new turn on Monday after former PM Sheikh Hasina fled the country. She landed at the Indian Air Force base at Hindon near New Delhi.

India has provided asylum to some leaders in the past. Let us take a look the leaders who sought asylum in the country.

Dalai Lama

Dalai Lama

In 1959, Dalai Lama escaped from Lhasa in Tibet and came to India. India had always treated Tibet as an independent nation. Dalai Lama wrote a letter to then Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and India took measures to protect him. He was granted asylum on April 3, 1959.

Ahmed Adeeb Abdul Ghafoor

Former vice president of Maldives Ahmed Adeeb Abdul Ghafoor.

Former vice president of Maldives, Ahmed Adeeb Abdul Ghafoor, sought asylum in India. He had arrived in Tamil Nadu; however, he was later arrested by the Maldives police in 2019 after the Indian authorities sent him back to Maldives. He served as the vice president of Maldives in 2015. He has also served as the Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture.

Mohamed Nasheed

Former Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed.

Mohamed Nasheed, former president of Maldives, took refuge in the Indian Hight Commission in Male in 2013. He went there after he was given an arrest warrant by a Maldivian court.

In 1975, Sheikh Hasina and her sister Sheikh Rehana had flown to India from Berlin after the assassination of their father Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rehman. For six years, she lived her life in exile in Delhi's Pandara Road till 1981.

Sheikh Hasina's family was killed on August 15, 1975, by the army.