Death sentence for Sheikh Hasina in 2025 Bangladesh has a disturbing echo of the Zulfikar Ali Bhutto saga from 1978 Pakistan

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the former Prime Minister of Pakistan, was hanged to death in 1979, and a hardcore Islamic fanatic military general, Zia-ul-Haq, took the reins of power into his hands. Fast forward to 2025, a redux of that dubious trial and execution tactic is playing out in Bangladesh, wherein a controversial tribunal has sentenced ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to death in absentia for ‘crimes against humanity’.

Hasina has been sentenced to death for allegedly masterminding the brutal state crackdown on last year’s student-led ‘July Uprising’ that toppled her 15-year rule. The crackdown on the protestors resulted in over 1,400 deaths. It must be noted that while the initial protests were indeed student-led, the movement was eventually hijacked by Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and other Islamist outfits.

The sham trial of Sheikh Hasina: A political farce

The International Crimes Tribunal (ICT), established under the interim government led by Mohammad Yunus, sentenced Sheikh Hasina and former Bangladesh Home Minister Assaduzaman Khan to death. While the ICT and Mohammad Yunus claimed that a fair trial would take place, it turned out to be a sham trial orchestrated by a rigged judicial system. The tribunal’s conduct throughout the trial and its absolutely biased verdict indicate that the entire trial was driven by political vengeance and the imperative of completely obliterating Sheikh Hasina and her political influence. Justice and accountability were the least of this tribunal’s concerns.

These are not mere sweeping allegations; rather, the legal proceedings in this case indicate that Sheikh Hasina’s trial was fundamentally flawed from its inception. There was a lack of basic due process. The trial bore the hallmark of a kangaroo court constituted only to dismantle political opposition.

Sheikh Hasina has been living in exile in India since her unceremonious ouster in August 2024. The former Bangladesh Prime Minister was tried without her presence or proper legal representation. The ICT rejected Hasina’s multiple requests for delays to allow her to appear, denying her the right to cross-examine witnesses or the presented evidence.

While the Yunus government did ask the Modi government in India to extradite Hasina to face the court in Bangladesh, India essentially denied such requests, given the obvious threat to Hasina’s life in her once-homeland and now a territory taken over by fundamentalists baying for her blood.

Sources close to Sheikh Hasina have described the evidence presented by the prosecution as “fake and fabricated”. It is being said that the evidence presented in the court against Hasina carried no forensic or documentary proof establishing her direct connection with the orders for using lethal force against the protestors. Several international human rights bodies have also raised questions over the impartiality of the tribunal.

Not to forget, the ICT, originally set up in the year 2009 to prosecute 1971 war crimes, was repurposed overnight by the Yunus-led unelected government to target and prosecute Awami League leaders, especially Sheikh Hasina.

The fact that the “International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh” is a sham, rigged body can be understood from the fact that Awami League leaders were exclusively put on trial for alleged human rights violations, only after the unelected Yunus government made sure that all senior judges and advocates who were not blatantly hostile to Sheikh Hasina were sacked.

The unelected Yunus government amended the laws to empower the ICT through executive fiat, as such amendments would otherwise have required parliamentary approval. The ICTA 2024 amendment expanded the scope and powers of the ICT ridiculously, as if the changes were being made only to tighten the noose around Sheikh Hasina’s neck.

In a nutshell, the “International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh” is neither impartial nor international in any way.

Bangladesh’s former Information Minister, Mohammad Ali Arafat, has dubbed the trial and the verdict against Sheikh Hasina “scripted” and a “sham”.

“This is a scripted, sham trial… The entire proceeding was controlled by Muhammad Yunus and his administration, he said, adding that Bangladesh has been taken over by Jihadists, including those from the Jamaat-e-Islami, led by Muhammad Yunus.

Meanwhile, Sheikh Hasina has also dismissed the trial and her conviction as a sham and also rejected the tribunal’s legitimacy.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in Pakistan, Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh: Different timelines, similar trials

The farce of a trial against Sheikh Hasina bears a striking resemblance to the 1978 trial and execution (in 1979) of Pakistan’s Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto under the regime of military dictator General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. Much like Sheikh Hasina in 2024, Bhutto, the founder of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), was ousted in a 1977 coup. Her ouster came amidst disputed elections.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was charged with orchestrating the assassination of a political rival, Ahmed Raza Kasuri. He was tried by the Lahore High Court, and the proceedings were riddled with irregularities.

The saga of Bhutto’s downfall began in 1977, when he was accused of committing fraud in the parliamentary elections. Protests erupted, and on 5^th July 1977, military general Zia-ul-Haq spearheaded a coup and overthrew Bhutto.

In no time, General Zia imposed military rule, political activities were brought to a complete standstill, and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was arrested. Just as in the case of Sheikh Hasina, Bhutto’s trial was marred with bias, restrictions and heavy influence of the Jihadist General Zia-ul-Haq. Most of Bhutto’s trial took place in secret sessions, further confirming that the proceedings were indeed unfair and were only a sham that eventually led to Bhutto’s judicial murder.

The only difference remains that Bangladesh’s Yunus pretends to be a tolerant and progressive leader, all while pandering to Islamists. Zia-ul-Haq, on the contrary, did not care to hide his Jihadist mindset behind any progressive-liberal veneer.

Bhutto’s unfair trial in the Lahore High Court went on, and he, along with four other accused, was convicted and sentenced to death. The PPP leader challenged the verdict in the Supreme Court. However, in an outrageous 4-3 decision delivered on 6^th February 1978, the apex court of Pakistan upheld the death sentence. While then Chief Justice Anwarul Haq, Justice Nasim Hasan Shah, Justice Dorab Patel, and Justice Muhammad Afzal Cheema upheld the death sentence, the three dissenting judges, Justice Safdar Shah, Justice Aslam Riaz Hussain, and Justice Qaiser Khan, wanted to acquit Bhutto or at least commute the sentence.

It is said that the Supreme Court bench that upheld Bhutto’s death sentence was stacked with General Zia’s loyalists. Much like in Sheikh Hasina’s case of in-absentia farce, while Bhutto’s trial went on for months, the verdict was pre-decided. With all avenues of clemency exhausted as President General Zia-ul-Haq refused to intervene, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged to death at the Rawalpindi Central Jail on 4^th April 1979.

Bhutto’s hanging remains one of the most controversial episodes in the judicial and political history of Pakistan. Many political leaders, human-rights groups, and Supreme Court judges have criticised the sheer lack of due process in Bhutto’s trial.

In March 2024, nearly four decades after Bhutto’s hanging, the Pakistani Supreme Court observed that the former Prime Minister did not receive a fair trial.

Announcing the unanimous during the hearing of case moved by then President Asif Ali Zardari in 2011 to revisit his father-in-law’s (Bhutto) conviction, Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa said, “The proceedings of the trial by the Lahore High Court and the appeal by the Supreme Court of Pakistan do not meet the requirements of the fundamental right to a fair trial and due process enshrined in Articles 4 and 9 of the Constitution and later guaranteed as a separate and fundamental right under Article 10A of the Constitution.”

While none of the Pakistani top leaders have ever had a truly secular mindset, which is also reflected in the anti-India and bigoted rhetoric, Bhutto was any day a better and progressive leader than Zia-ul-Haq.

Pakistan’s descent into Islamic fanaticism under Zia-ul-Haq

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s departure marked the onset of General Zia’s full-throttle Islamisation of Pakistan. He pivoted Pakistan from a fragile democracy to an Islamic theocratic-militarist state that sowed the seeds of Islamic extremism that continues to hold the South Asian nation in its clutches.

Whatever secular element was left in the Pakistani law was erased as General Zia introduced Federal Shariat Courts in the year 1980 to enforce Islamic law.

In 1979, Zia-ul-Haq enacted the Hudood Ordinances, a set of laws which not only criminalised adultery, theft, and alcohol but also imposed punishments as per the Islamic Sharia, including whipping, amputation, and stoning. One of the most controversial of these ordinances was the Offence of Zina Ordinance. This ordinance criminalised sex outside marriage, disproportionately targeting women and non-Muslims. These laws made it difficult for women, especially rape victims, to seek justice as the burden of proof required four Islamic religious witnesses for a charge of rape to be filed against the accused.

Instead of delivering justice to the victim, these laws resulted in the prosecution of rape victims for ‘Zina’ or unlawful sex. While in 2006, some amendments were made to this law, its core outrageous and discriminatory provisions remain unchanged. In addition, Zia also brought Qisas and Diyat laws. Notably, as per Sharia, blood money or Diyya or Diyat is accepted by the victim’s family from the murderer in case the death was unintentional or accidental or if the deceased victim’s family decides to forgive the murderer and not seek retribution or Qiyas or Qisas. Zia introduced laws that valued women’s testimony and blood money compensation (diyat) at half that of a man.

To further Islamise Pakistan and ensure that any real or fabricated insult to Islam is met with the harshest punishment, under Zia’s regime, the blasphemy laws in Pakistan were expanded, carrying mandatory death penalties. The strengthening of the blasphemy laws has impacted Pakistan in such a way that decades after Zia-ul-Haq died, Islamic vigilante killings persist in the country, with Hindus and other non-Muslim communities, even some Muslim castes, being its victims.

Although Zulfikar Ali Bhutto backed the Operation Gibraltar in Kashmir and led Pakistan into the 1965 war, only to lose against India, Zia-ul-Haq played his role in the creation of an Islamic terrorism arc in the region that has benefitted Pakistan’s de facto rule, the Pakistan Army, while taking the lives of countless innocent people in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In his bid to consolidate power, Zia-ul-Haq funnelled American and Saudi aid via the CIA’s Operation Cyclone to the Afghan Mujahideen, radicalising the Pakistani people. Under his Islamisation program, Zia-ul-Haq widely promoted Deobandi madarsas, with reports saying that such radical madarsas exploded from around 900 in 1971 to 8,000 by 1988. These madarsas had one objective: to indoctrinate Pakistanis with fundamentalist Wahhabi-Salafi Islamic ideology. Zia-ul-Haq essentially turned Pakistan into the staging ground, recruitment centre, training hub and arms conduit for the anti-Soviet Jihad that went on for a decade from 1979 to 1989.

With over $10 billion in US and Saudi money, the ISI under Zia-ul-Haq formed the deadliest Islamic Jihadi infrastructure in the world.

General Zia’s Islamisation project eventually contributed to the birth of the Taliban and al-Qaeda networks that continue to carry out terrorist attacks on non-Muslims. Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamic fanaticism and its application as state policy pushed Pakistan into a spiral of military coups and dominance, terrorism and sectarian violence. His push for establishing Sunni orthodoxy led to the creation of several Sunni violent outfits like Sipah-e—Sahaba, which carried out terror attacks and killings of Shias.

In fact, a faction of the Islamic terrorist entities created, fostered and harboured by the Pakistani military regime since Zia’s tenure has become a Frankenstein’s monster harming its very creators. The very Islamic terror groups Pakistan created, funded, shielded and used against India have gone out of the Pakistani military’s control. The situation has reached a point where the Pakistani military and its puppet government call these terrorists ‘Fitna-al-Khawarij’, ‘Fitna al Hind’, Afghani terrorists and whatnot to pin the blame on foreign entities, while in reality, these ‘demons’ are the Pakistani military establishment’s own creation.

General Zia’s ambition of coalescing Islamism into the core of Pakistani society’s consciousness was not confined to erecting madrasas, recruiting and arming Jihadis. The entire education system of Pakistan was turned into a Jihadi extremism factory. The Zia regime got textbooks rewritten to glorify Islamic Jihad, portray Hindus and India as eternal enemies, and his military rule as ‘divine obligation’. With little changes here and there, Pakistan continues to teach distorted history and Islamic extremism to produce generations radicalised from childhood. Anyone who calls out this systemic radicalisation there is deemed as someone ‘not Muslim enough’, ‘enemy of Islam’ and whatnot.

This is the opprobrious legacy Zia-ul-Haq left. The damage done by General Zia continues to drag Pakistan deeper into the abyss of extremism and anarchy. In Pakistan, the civilian government, elected government and terms like democracy are nothing but a farce. Elections continue to be rigged, political parties continue to require the Army’s blessing and backing to come, and most importantly, stay in power. Any deviance from the Army-prescribed agenda results in ouster from power, jailing, and even killing of the elected or selected leaders.

PTI’s Imran Khan remains a prime example of this. He won the elections, had the Army’s support initially, but his attempts at curbing military dominance in governance and policymaking led to his abrupt ouster from power. Khan landed in jail and continues to languish there while a military-backed puppet regime has been installed.

In fact, a new Zia-ul-Haq is emerging in Pakistan, the self-appointed madarsa-bred ‘Field Marshal’ Asim Munir. While violence, bombings have always been a ‘normal’ in Pakistan, such is the dominance of the army that despite thousands of soldiers killed in various attacks by TTP and Baloch freedom fighters, among other militant groups, as well as a humiliation at the hands of Indian Armed Forces during the Operation Sindoor in May this year, Asim Munir appointed himself as ‘Field Marshal’. Not only this, Munir has, through the puppet government led by Shehbaz Sharif has also secured constitutional amendments to ensure his grip on power remains tight till he breathes his last.

After Yahya Khan, Zia-ul-Haq, and Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan is once again falling into the hands of an Islamic fanatic military dictator, Asim Munir, whose Islamic extremist rhetoric, particularly his vitriolic speeches against India and Hindus, echoes the jihadist mindset of the previous military dictators.

While Pakistan never had a secular leader, it was always about lesser extremist verses more extremist. Even Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, despite being a leftist-socialist, was no saint. Bhutto in his UNSC speech of 1965, declared that Pakistan would “wage a thousand-year war” against India. Bhutto’s successor, military dictator and the reason behind his death, Zia-ul-Haq, was no different. General Zia only took forward Bhutto’s ambition in a more aggressive fashion and vowed to “bleed India with a thousand cuts”.

Be it socialist Bhutto or military dictators Yahya Khan, Zia-ul-Haq, Pervez Musharraf or now the dictator-in-the-making, Asim Munir, all have been equally hateful towards India while the degree of their Islamic fanaticism varied.

The byproduct of having hatred and religious fanaticism as state policy has been the economic downslide of Pakistan. The country is surviving on loans from the IMF and foreign countries. Pakistan has not seen political stability for many years. And now, Bangladesh is heading in the same direction.

Bangladesh heading the Pakistan way

Bangladesh, which came into existence in 1971 with India’s military support against Pakistan’s oppressive rule, is rapidly becoming the very menace it fought against and freed itself from. Just as it was in the case of Zia’s 1977 putsch against Bhutto, Sheikh Hasina’s ouster empowered Islamists overnight. In Pakistan, religious minorities and sects within the Muslim community not deemed ‘Muslim enough’ by Sunni hardliners became victims of Zia’s Islamisation project. In Bangladesh, Hindus and other religious minorities became the first casualty in the student protest-turned-Islamist-takeover-mission.

Bangladesh is witnessing a drastic rise in Islamism and anti-India sentiment after Yunus came to power. He first revoked the ban on the radical Islamist outfit ‘Jamaat-e-Islami’, which was involved in leading the anti-Hindu pogrom after Sheikh Hasina’s ouster last year. Thereafter, he released the leader of the radical outfit ‘Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT)’, Muhammad Jasimuddin Rahmani.

At the same time, Muhammad Yunus downplayed the targeted attacks on the Hindu community by violent Muslim mobs. He has gone on record, from lamenting about attacks on Hindus to saying that the claims of atrocities are ‘exaggerated‘.

In that way, the controversial US asset was able to placate Islamic extremists. Given that the Awami League was against Islamism, the interim government first banned its student wing, ‘Chhatra League,’ and then the parent party.

Under the watch of Muhammad Yunus, Bangladesh saw a drastic rise in vigilante Muslim mobs or Tawhidi Janta, which unleashed violence under the pretext of protecting the tenets of Islam.

The Yunus regime introduced new textbooks for primary and secondary students, which falsely claimed that the first declaration of independence of Bangladesh was made by Ziaur Rehman (a favourite icon of Muslim hardliners in Bangladesh).

Islamist leaders and ex-army officials like Fazlur Rahman publicly made anti-India remarks, with some even daydreaming about capturing India’s northeast states. Similarly, an ‘adviser’ to the Muhammad Yunus-led interim government of Bangladesh named Mahfuz Alam had threatened to capture India on the occasion of Vijay Diwas on 16^th December 2024.

To appease Islamists, the Yunus regime stopped the recruitment of music teachers in government primary schools. In November this year, the Yunus regime scrapped the posts of assistant teachers for music and physical education in primary schools. This came after Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami leader Mia Golam Parwar had lashed out at the decision to recruit music and dance teachers. He dubbed it ‘completely unacceptable’ and ‘a suicidal move for the nation’. Islami Andolon Bangladesh (IAB), Hefazat-e-Islam and Khelafat Majlish, among Islamic extremist outfits, also declared music as ‘un-Islamic’ and threatened to unleash violence and chaos.

In July this year, the Muhammad Yunus-led interim government issued an ordinance plunging Bangladesh into authoritarianism. The ordinance eliminated the right of employees to protest against the government. He also issued a notice stifling criticism of his regime by students and educational institutions.

The descent of Bangladesh under Yunus into the swamp of Islamism is multi-faceted. Besides empowering Islamists, antagonising its oldest friend and protector, India, the Yunus regime is leaving no stone unturned to push the Islamist agenda in all institutions of the country. In this vein, the ‘Bangladesh Bank’ gave a farman (diktat) barring female employees from wearing ‘short dresses’, ‘short sleeves’ and ‘leggings’ in July this year. The directive by the Central Bank of Bangladesh also recommended that women wear headscarves and hijab. Earlier, Islamists had unleashed havoc on university teachers in Bangladesh by labelling them as ‘anti-hijab.’

In July 2025, an Islamic outfit named ‘Jamaat-Char Monai’ announced its plans to turn Bangladesh into a Sharia-compliant nation like Afghanistan.

In April this year, Muslims belonging to the radical outfit ‘Hefazat-e-Islam’ hung the effigy of a woman, stripped and defiled it with shoes to demand the abolishment of the Women Affairs Reform Commission in Bangladesh.

Previously, OpIndia had reported on the alarming rise of rape cases in Bangladesh under the watch of Muhammad Yunus. In the meantime, Islamists who committed heinous crimes against women were freed by the top court of the country.

While Bangladesh was no ‘utopia’ under Sheikh Hasina’s rule, the country was witnessing economic growth, improved standard of living, had political stability and good relations with neighbouring countries. Bangladesh’s textile industry was booming, and infrastructure projects were taking shape of reality; however, Sheikh Hasina also sparked criticism for centralising power.

And, now with Hasina gone, the country, instead of witnessing the restoration of democracy in its truest form, considering the anti-Hasina agitators dubbed her a ‘dictator’, is grappling with an economic slump. The inflation is over 8% and food prices are surging dramatically. Reduced investment, shrinking revenue, empty markets and skyrocketing inflation are the present reality of the ‘post-revolution’ Bangladesh under the Yunus regime.

As per the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates, Bangladesh’s GDP growth has slumped from 4.2% in the fiscal year 2024 to 3.7% in the FY2025. Bangladesh grapples with low tax collection, banks lacking capital and slowed economic reforms.

Beyond the economic front, unlike Muhammad Yunus, who is mollycoddling Pakistan despite the latter’s outright refusal to apologise for the horrific atrocities the Pakistani Army committed against Bengalis before 1971, Sheikh Hasina never rushed to embrace her people’s oppressors.

While the Yunus regime is busy erasing the contributions and legacy of ‘Bangbandhu’ Sheikh Mujibur Rehman and India’s decisive role in Bangladesh’s liberation, Hasina acknowledged India’s military help against Pakistani oppressors, and also resolved several of the Indo-Bangladesh issues amicably through dialogue. Unlike Yunus, who downplays anti-Hindu violence and dismisses criticism as ‘India’s propaganda’, Sheikh Hasina tried to keep Islamic extremism and violence against minorities in check.

Apparently, Muhammad Yunus is trying to pull off a ‘Zia-ul-Haq’ playbook before the elections in Bangladesh. Although by banning Hasina’s Awami League from contesting elections, Yunus had already done half the work. In only a few months long rule, the Yunus regime is erasing the legacy of Mujibur Rehman, the leader of Bangladesh’s liberation movement and Sheikh Hasina’s father, destroying the secular fabric of the country, dismantling Hasina’s party Awami League and antagonising traditional allies like India.

The parallels between the sham trials of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Sheikh Hasina

While decades separate Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Sheikh Hasina, there are parallels in their cases. Both reached the pinnacle of power and popularity in their respective countries, and both ended up getting accused of centralising authority. Both faced allegations of electoral fraud and dictatorial conduct by the opposition. Both of them were abruptly and forcibly removed from power, and their departure plunged their countries into the jaws of Islamist fanatics and triggered chaos.

Both Bhutto and Hasina faced legal proceedings marred by political vendetta and bias. Both received death sentences, and their countries underwent coup-fuelled Islamisation. In both cases, the judiciary was weaponised. The adversaries of both Bhutto and Hasina used courts and special tribunals for sham trials to end their political careers and even their lives.

However, there are also differences in the situations of Bhutto and Hasina. Firstly, the nature of charges brought up against them differs. While Bhutto was arrested and tried before the court physically, Sheikh Hasina was forced to flee her country on 5^th August 2025 and was thus prosecuted in absentia. Bhutto was hanged to death in 1979 after all avenues of clemency were exhausted. Hasina, on the contrary, resides in India under the protection of the Indian government. It is highly unlikely that the Modi government would extradite Sheikh Hasina to Bangladesh. The India factor remains decisive in Hasina’s case.

Interestingly, the public perception about Bhutto and Hasina also varies. While Bhutto eventually was elevated to the status of a martyr of military justice, or rather injustice, Hasina, other than her loyal support base, is subjected to criticism by her country now under the heavy influence of Islamists. It remains to be seen how Sheikh Hasina, who once led Bangladesh’s economic turnaround, will engineer her political resurrection.