29/09/2026
YOLO নামে এসব পেইজ গুলারে সাপোর্ট দেওয়া দরকার..
Today marks the birthday of Sheikh Hasina, one of the most influential political figures in Bangladesh’s history. Across social media, supporters, public figures and people from different professions have been sharing birthday wishes for the former prime minister. Her political opponents continue to criticise her record, but few can deny the extraordinary scale of her influence on Bangladesh’s politics over the past four decades.
Another striking part of Sheikh Hasina’s political journey is the number of times she has survived potentially deadly attacks.
According to various government records and official accounts, the Awami League president faced between 20 and 22 assassination attempts or plots during her political career. The incidents vary in nature and strength of evidence. Some involved direct gunfire, bombs and grenades, while others were foiled plots or security threats detected before an attack could be carried out.
One of the earliest major incidents came on January 24, 1988, at Laldighi in Chattogram. Police opened fire on a procession led by Hasina, killing 24 people and injuring many others. Hasina survived. More than three decades later, five former police officers were sentenced to death over the killings.
In August 1989, attackers fired shots and hurled explosives at her residence at Dhanmondi 32 while she was inside. Eleven Freedom Party members were later convicted in connection with the attack.
The threats continued through the 1990s. Hasina’s motorcade came under gunfire at Green Road in 1991, while a train carrying her was allegedly attacked in Ishwardi in 1994. Other gun and bomb attacks were reported around her political programmes in 1995 and 1996.
One of the most serious assassination plots was uncovered in July 2000, when authorities recovered a bomb weighing around 76 kilograms near the venue of a rally Hasina was scheduled to address in Kotalipara, Gopalganj. Investigators linked the plot to members of Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami Bangladesh, and several accused were later convicted.
Further bomb plots and attacks followed in Khulna, Sylhet, Satkhira and Barishal.
Then came August 21, 2004.
Grenades tore through an Awami League rally at Bangabandhu Avenue moments after Hasina finished speaking. Twenty-four people were killed and hundreds were injured. Party activists and security personnel surrounded Hasina, creating a human shield before taking her to safety.
She survived what remains one of the deadliest political attacks in Bangladesh’s history.
Two decades later, August 5, 2024, presented Sheikh Hasina with another extraordinary personal security crisis.
As the anti-government movement reached its climax, large crowds moved towards Ganabhaban. With the security situation deteriorating rapidly, Hasina left the official residence by military helicopter at around 2:00pm and later departed Bangladesh. Protesters entered Ganabhaban shortly afterwards. These circumstances clearly placed her personal safety at serious risk.
Despite decades of political confrontation, imprisonment, exile, violent attacks and assassination plots, Sheikh Hasina remained at the centre of Bangladeshi politics for much of her life. Her ability to survive repeated threats and return repeatedly to political leadership has become one of the defining features of her career.
Now, Sheikh Hasina has spoken of returning to Bangladesh in December 2026, potentially opening another major chapter in her political journey.
A return would undoubtedly come with significant legal, political and security challenges. Given her history, concerns over her personal security would also be difficult to ignore. However, predicting another assassination attempt would be speculation.
What can be said with certainty is that Sheikh Hasina has already survived circumstances that could have ended her political journey—and, on several occasions, her life.
For more than four decades, she has faced bullets, bombs, grenades, militant plots, political upheaval and repeated threats to her security. Yet she continued to return to politics and eventually became Bangladesh’s longest-serving prime minister.
On her birthday, her supporters see that survival as a symbol of resilience and determination. Whatever one’s political position, Sheikh Hasina’s repeated survival through some of the darkest episodes of Bangladesh’s political violence remains an extraordinary chapter in the country’s history.
If she returns to Bangladesh in December, it will not simply be the return of a former prime minister. It could mark yet another chapter in the remarkable political journey of a leader who has repeatedly survived attempts to remove her—not only from power, but, on several occasions, from life itself.
