Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has shared that she had lived with her children under an assumed identity on Delhi’s Pandara Road – trying to escape the attention of those who assassinated her father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

Nearly five decades later, a visibly emotional Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, in an interview with ANI, opened up about the piercing trauma that haunted her for decades.

She vividly recounted the fast-paced events of 1975 when she left Bangladesh to join her nuclear scientist husband in Germany.

It was July 30 in 1975 and family members had come to the airport to see off Sheikh Hasina and her sister Sheikh Rehana. 

It was a happy farewell and Sheikh Hasina had no inkling that it would turn out to be her last meeting with her parents.

“Because my husband was abroad, I used to live in the same house with my parents. That day everyone was there: my father, mother, my three brothers and two sisters-in-law. They came to the airport to see us off…. That was the last day, you know,” Prime Minister Hasina recounted one of the darkest chapters in Bangladesh’s history.

A fortnight later, on the morning of August 15, Sheikh Hasina received news that she found hard to believe. Her father, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, had been killed. 

The horrors did not stop at learning about her father’s death but got further compounded when she received news of the summary execution of more members of her family.

“It was really unbelievable. Unbelievable that any Bangali could do it and still we didn’t know what really happened. Only that there was a coup, and then we heard that my father was assassinated. But we didn’t know that all the family members were, you know, they were assassinated,” Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said, fighting back tears.

India was one of the first countries to extend help, she recalled.

“Mrs Indira Gandhi immediately sent information that she wanted to give us, I mean, security and shelter. We received offers for shelter… especially from Marshal Tito from Yugoslavia and Mrs Gandhi. We decided to go there (Delhi), because we thought that if we go to Delhi, from there we’ll be able to go back to our country. And then we’ll be able to know how many members of the family are still alive,” the Bangladesh prime minister said.

“It was a very difficult time,” she said. The then Bangladesh Ambassador to Germany, Humayun Rashid Chowdhury, was the first person to give an account of her family’s massacre.

“For a few moments, I didn’t know where I was. But I thought about my sister… She's 10 years younger than me. So, I wondered how she would take it. It was so difficult for her… In Delhi, at first, they put us in a house with all security, because they were also worried about us,” recounted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

Asked if she felt that she too was a possible target, she said those who had killed her father also carried out attacks at the houses of other relatives and killed some of her kin. 

“Almost 18 members, mostly my relatives, and then some domestic workers and their children and some guests, my uncle were among those killed,” she said.

The conspirators had a clear aim – that no one from Bangabandhu’s family should ever come back to power.

“My younger brother was only 10 years old… They did not spare him either. When we returned to Delhi, it was perhaps the 24th of August… Then I met Prime Minister Mrs Gandhi. She called us… there we came to know that nobody was alive. She made all the arrangements for a job for my husband and this Pandara Road house. We stayed there. The first 2-3 years were extremely difficult to accept. My children, my son, was only four years old. My daughter, she was younger… Both of them used to cry. They wanted to go back to my mother, my father and they still remembered my younger brother mostly,” Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said.

So much had been lost, yet, Sheikh Hasina also realized that she had to think ahead.

“This crime, not only they killed my father but they also moved the nation from the ideology of our Liberation War. Everything was lost in just one night, everything just changed. And those killers... they were still haunting us. They were trying to find out where we were, so when we lived on Pandara Road, our names were changed,” said the Awami League leader.

“And it was so painful that you cannot use your own name, own identity,” added the prime minister.

“Definitely I wanted to go back to my country. But taking responsibility for such a big party, I never thought about it,” she added. 

However, she travelled to different countries during this time and even addressed a public meeting in London on August 16, 1980, demanding punishment for her father’s killers.

“To bring them to justice or bring them to book, so that the trial should take place because there was immunity granted to them. There was an ordinance… killers get all types of facilities and immunity… they claimed that yes, they committed this crime and they were very vocal. Because they thought they were very powerful,” remarked Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

She continued with the campaign, roping in many eminent people. 

“On one hand we lost everybody, and on the other, I cannot ask for justice. Justice was denied. So that was the situation. Then again, I returned to Delhi, at the end of 1980 or 81,” she recalled.

However, by this time there was another important development in Bangladesh. 

“Awami League had a conference, and at that time they, in my absence, declared me as the president of the party,” said the prime minister, who eventually moved back to Bangladesh and again reached the top position in the country's political arena.

“They tried to kill me, several times, but I survived. In broad daylight, there was a grenade attack. I don’t know how I survived. Our party leaders, workers, they just covered me, made human shields, so they received all the splinters but I... I survived… They placed a huge bomb at my meeting… Somehow it was discovered... So, I survived again. I don't know... Allah is helping me, maybe Allah has given me some responsibility to fulfill,” she added.