Indian FM to attend Bangladesh ex-PM Zia’s state funeral

NEW DELHI: India’s foreign minister will make his first visit to neighbouring Bangladesh since last year’s mass uprising there to attend the funeral of former leader Khaleda Zia, New Delhi said on Tuesday.

Zia, Bangladesh’s first woman prime minister, died on Tuesday aged 80. Her state funeral on Wednesday is expected to draw vast crowds in Dhaka.

India’s foreign ministry said its top diplomat, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, “will represent the government and people of India at the funeral”.

It will be the most senior visit by an Indian official since the overthrow of New Delhi’s close ally Sheikh Hasina in 2024.

Hasina fled to India, where she has remained, straining relations between Dhaka and New Delhi.

Also Read: Khaleda Zia, Bangladesh’s first female prime minister, dies at 80

Bangladesh has repeatedly requested Hasina’s extradition. She was sentenced to death in absentia in November for orchestrating a deadly crackdown on the uprising.

New Delhi has also criticised Muslim-majority Bangladesh over the treatment of minorities, particularly Hindus.

Bangladesh’s interim leader, Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, has accused India of exaggerating the scale of the violence.

But New Delhi is also closely watching the upcoming elections on February 12, 2026, the first vote in the South Asian nation of 170 million people since the uprising.

Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) is widely seen as a frontrunner in elections, and her son Tarique Rahman, who returned only on Thursday after 17 years in exile, is seen as a potential prime minister if it wins a majority.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Tuesday that he hoped Zia’s “vision and legacy will continue to guide our partnership”, a warm message despite the strained relations between New Delhi and Dhaka since Hasina’s fall.