In the weeks leading up to her sentencing for crimes against humanity on November 17th 2025, Sheikh Hasina set out to remake her image. From exile in India, the ousted prime minister gave a string of emailed interviews to international outlets, striking a careful, even conciliatory tone. She spoke of justice “for all”, mourned “each life lost” under her watch, and warned against deepening “division” in Bangladesh. In one interview, she went so far as to appeal for national healing.
Off script, however, a radically different Hasina was speaking.
In impromptu phone calls to party activists where no public relations team was shaping her words, she urged revenge, called for homes to be burned in retaliation, pressed for guerrilla-style armed retribution, and scolded supporters for not retaliating with violence. In one recording, she even asked why the Bangladeshi army was not rolling out tanks after a court initiated proceedings against some of its officers for gross human rights abuses.
In English, Hasina cast herself as a liberal democrat committed to justice and stability. In Bengali, speaking to loyalists, she demanded “an eye for an eye”, even invoking Quranic verses to justify her incitement.
Netra News reviewed more than two dozen of the call recordings, which show a leader who sounds embittered, aggrieved and increasingly desperate. In calls after calls, she portrayed herself as a victim entitled to violent retribution. What is striking is not only the brazenness of those calls, but also the degree of tolerance shown by her Indian hosts, who have continued to speak publicly of “peace and stability” in Bangladesh.
Hasina’s UK-based PR firm, Palatine, did not respond to requests for comment or questions about the recordings’ authenticity. India’s Ministry of External Affairs also did not respond to a request for comment.
At Netra News’ request, Tech Global Institute (TGI) carried out an independent open-source forensic assessment of eighteen publicly available audio clips, finding no conclusive evidence of material manipulation.
Although the files lacked metadata and other forensic markers that would normally help verify authenticity, the group found no clear signs of artificial intelligence-generated manipulation or significant audio editing. In a separate voice-comparison analysis, researchers found that 15 clips closely matched Hasina’s known voice. The remaining three were rated lower because background noise made attribution less certain.
The following recreates a short segment from a Telegram call between Sheikh Hasina and her followers. Click the icon to listen to the 20-second clip. The audio was rated lower in a voice-similarity assessment by independent experts; however, they found no signs of significant editing or AI-based manipulation.
icon to listen to the 20-second clip. The audio was rated lower in a voice-similarity assessment by independent
experts; however, they found no signs of significant editing or AI-based manipulation.
As these calls spread, Bangladesh slid into renewed turmoil.
In the days before Hasina’s sentencing by the International Crimes Tribunal — which would impose the death penalty after a trial in absentia — arson attacks and crude bombings targeted public transport and the homes of interim government officials. On December 12th, a firebrand student leader, Osman Hadi, was shot in what investigators believe was a targeted political killing by Awami League activists, a kind of assassination Bangladesh has not seen in decades.
Political violence is hardly new in Bangladesh, and parties almost always deny responsibility. This time, the Awami League did not — if anything, it signalled more to come. Hasina’s US-based son and likely heir-apparent, Sajeeb Wazed, warned Reuters that excluding the party from upcoming elections would lead to more bloodshed. He doubled down in November, telling India Today, “If these elections are allowed to go ahead, then Bangladesh becomes another failed state. With the Awami League constantly protesting, it will turn into violence, and it will be an unstable country.”
License to kill
Hasina’s most visceral appeals came not long after her flight to India in August 2024, after a crackdown ordered by her government killed an estimated 700 to 1,400 people.
Just two months into her exile, Jahangir Alam, a former local official in northern Bangladesh, called her to say his home had been torched, allegedly by supporters of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Jamaat-e-Islami, both Hasina’s nemesis.
“If your homes can be destroyed, so can theirs,” she went on. “If they burn my house, I won’t hesitate to burn theirs.”
Alam agreed.
By October that year, criminal complaints accusing Hasina of ordering excessive use of lethal force had piled up.
The recording was rated lower in a voice-comparison analysis by independent researchers, though they found no evidence of AI-based manipulation. A separate forensic examination by the police’s Criminal Investigation Department reportedly concluded that the recording was Sheikh Hasina’s and submitted that finding to a court.
In the same recording, she pushed the point further.
She advanced a similar argument in another call in September last year, suggesting that the banning of the Awami League and its affiliated organisations somehow shielded the party from responsibility for any acts of subversion carried out in its name.
In at least three other recordings retrieved in October 2025, Hasina promised her supporters that she would deliver them revenge.
In another virtual speech made public in September 2025, she warned, “They must be shown, ‘If you touch fire, your hands will burn’.”
Yet, none of this fury appeared in her international interviews. Writing to The Independent, for example, she said she “mourns each and every child, sibling, cousin and friend we lost as a nation” during her rule and urged Bangladesh to “heal”. In a contemporaneous interview with Agence France-Presse, she said her priority was “the welfare and stability of Bangladesh.” Speaking to Reuters, she framed her crusade as “not about me or my family” but “for Bangladesh to achieve the future we all want.”
In the recordings reviewed, Hasina not only failed to discourage violence, but she argued for it. In a September 2025 call, addressing activists who appeared hesitant, she asked: “Why wait to regain power and then take revenge or get justice through the courts? When they have seized power illegally, what is there left to think about with them at all?”
She then took things a step further: “Why do you forget that Bangladesh won its freedom through guerrilla war? You must take that same path. Those responsible — wherever they are, however you find them — take immediate action [against them].”
In another call, Hasina was even more explicit about what she expected from her party.
“The one who burns your house has his house intact — why?” she asked her loyalists. “Why this weakness? This country has been liberated through guerrilla warfare. You better remember it.”
When an activist promised to take up arms to kill those who had supposedly targeted fellow Awami Leaguers, Hasina cut in — not to object to the violence itself, but because she thought he was overpromising. When the activist wished to kill opponents, she responded: “Talk less. Those who talk too much can’t get things done. So talk less, work more. Alright? Don’t say it out loud. Do it first, then show that it’s been done. Alright?”
There are signs her wishes were fulfilled.
Before the verdict against her was announced, a wave of targeted arson followed during a transport strike that she asked her loyalists to enforce. The strike saw the targeting of public buses, buildings, and the homes of officials. Arson attacks on buses in Mymensingh and Manikganj burned two drivers alive.
Such violence during political strikes is not uncommon in Bangladesh, and parties typically deny responsibility and condemn it. In this case, the Awami League did not — even as the interim government accused it of stoking the unrest.
In a speech in June last year, she again urged party members to wage “guerrilla warfare” against their own country. “Bangladesh was liberated through a guerrilla war. So teach them a lesson, in whatever way possible. This is my order,” she said in a virtual address.
Netra News identified at least three separate instances in which Hasina invoked guerrilla war, and her subordinates appeared to grasp her meaning.
A minister from her cabinet said at a virtual address: “If needed, the Awami League will launch a war like the Liberation War through which we liberated Bangladesh.” “Awami League won’t give up,” he said. “If we’re left with no other route, we will have to prepare to walk toward a second liberation war.”
A photo published on the party’s official Facebook page on November 17th 2025, the day of Hasina’s sentencing, echoed a similar messaging. “Crores of activists are ready. There will be a war again,” the photo read.
Bangladesh’s Liberation War in 1971 was initially fought through guerilla warfare against the Pakistani military, with freedom fighters sheltered in neighbouring India, under the political leadership of the Awami League party. Today, the party — now banned in the country it helped found and operating from refuge in India — repeatedly invokes that history. But any attempt to replicate it would not mean a defence against foreign occupiers but a war on fellow Bangladeshis.
On at least two occasions, Hasina also cited the Quran to justify violent revenge. In the November 2025 speech, where she referred to “guerrilla warfare”, she said: “To put simply, a hand for a hand, and an eye for an eye. That’s been set out in the Quran.”
In another call a month earlier, she made the same argument. “An eye for an eye, a hand for a hand — keeping in mind the Quran, you will take action with whatever you have. That’s what I want,” she concluded.
She also appeared, more than once, to prod the military, an institution with a storied history of coups. “Just after Bangabandhu returned, he bought tanks for the armed forces, and then I did as well,” she said, referring to her father. “Those apparently could only be used to kill us. Now that doesn’t happen,” she added, in what sounded like a note of complaint.
After prosecutors at the International Crimes Tribunal — the same court that later sentenced her to death — charged dozens of current and former military officials over enforced disappearances and killings during her rule, Hasina mocked the armed forces for allowing the cases to proceed.
“How dare they issue a warrant against these officers? I want to ask, ‘Where did they find the audacity to do this? Don’t they have any courageous people these days?’” she asked in an address posted to Facebook on October 18th 2025.
She went on to taunt the military for tolerating the legal process. “I don’t know — has the army lost its strength? Can they not get them and take them away? Then they would get their answer.”
After Sharif Osman Hadi, an anti-Hasina and anti-India student leader, was shot dead in December, surveillance footage released by authorities suggested the involvement of individuals linked to the Awami League, some of whom allegedly fled to India.
The assassination triggered a sudden eruption of nationwide protests and a renewed crackdown on Hasina’s party. In response, she appeared to offer a justification for her pursuit of revenge.
“They can’t bear the weight of even a single death,” she commented. “Have they ever thought about how brutally innumerable Awami League activists have been tortured to death?” ●
The following is a list of audio recordings reviewed as part of the investigation. Note that the transcripts — in both the original Bengali and the English translation — were automatically generated using Google’s PinPoint and Translate tools. As such, they may contain errors and may not fully correspond to the human-transcribed and translated excerpts used in the story.
Aaqib Md. Shatil analyzed audio clips and spoke to experts to report the story. Subinoy Mustofi Eron created the featured illustration and designed the layout of the graphic webpage, which Al Amin Tusher helped develop.