New Delhi: External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar will travel to Dhaka for the funeral of former Bangladesh prime minister Begum Khaleda Zia on Wednesday. The visit comes at a time when ties between the two countries have remained tense in the last few weeks.
“External Affairs Minister, Dr. S. Jaishankar will represent the Government and people of India at the funeral of Begum Khaleda Zia, former Prime Minister of Bangladesh and Chairperson of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. He will accordingly visit Dhaka on 31 December 2025,” the Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement Tuesday.
Khaleda Zia, 80, the first female prime minister of Bangladesh, passed away at Evercare Hospital in Dhaka Tuesday after a prolonged illness, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) announced in a statement on the social media platform X.
Days before her death, her son and incumbent leader Tarique Rahman returned to Dhaka after a 17-year exile in London.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi extended his condolences earlier in the day on the social media platform X. Bangladesh has announced a three-day mourning, with a State funeral to be held Wednesday.
Zia had been in hospital since November.
She had been a mainstay in Bangladesh’s politics along with Sheikh Hasina for most of the last four decades.
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Jaishankar in Bangladesh
During his visit, Jaishankar is expected to meet with Tarique Rahman and senior Bangladeshi officials. The external affairs minister has met with his Bangladesh counterpart Touhid Hossain on the margins of various international summits. However, this will likely be the first meeting between the two in either of their respective countries.
A number of foreign ministers including Pakistan’s Ishaq Dar, Lyonpo D.N. Dhungyel of Bhutan, Lt. Gen. Bala Nanda Sharma (Retd.) of Nepal are all expected to attend the funeral as well.
Khaleda Zia emerged in public following the assassination of her husband and former President of Bangladesh Lieutenant General Ziaur Rahman in 1981.
She took the reins of the BNP in 1984, and eventually led the country between 1991 and 1996, and also between 2001 and 2006.
The country is set to vote on 12 February, with the BNP expected to come out as the leading party in Bangladesh.
The country has faced a number of domestic challenges in recent weeks.
Sharif Osman Hadi, a political aspirant, was shot by unknown assailants on 11 December and later died in Singapore on 18 December. Hadi’s death has led to protests across Bangladesh, and a further chill in diplomatic ties with India. In the early days following his shooting, reports emerged from Bangladesh alleging that the assailants escaped to India.
However, Bangladeshi authorities at the time had rejected the reports, highlighting that they were unsure of the location of the assailants.
Nevertheless, as a part of the protests, Bangladeshis gathered near Indian missions in Dhaka, Rajshahi and Chattogram. India shut down its visa centres temporarily in-line with the security situation.
Amidst the protests due to Hadi’s death, a Hindu man, Dipu Chandra Das, was lynched in Mymensingh, which led to protests in India, outside the Bangladeshi missions in New Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata.
The counter protests led to both High Commissioners being summoned by New Delhi and Dhaka respectively, further impacting already strained ties between India and Bangladesh.
Former prime minister Sheikh Hasina who was ousted in August 2024 remains in New Delhi, and Dhaka has sought her extradition to face trial at the International Crimes Tribunal – Bangladesh (ICT-B) for crimes against humanity. The ICT-B sentenced Hasina to death last month for crimes against humanity in attempting to suppress the anti-quota demonstrations last year.
Furthermore, Modi has met with Bangladesh’s Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus once, earlier this year in Thailand on the margins of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC).
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)
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