Hasina's Son Warns Bangladesh Is 'Another Pakistan' for India
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- Sajeeb Wazed Joy declared at a Delhi media event that Bangladesh has become "another Pakistan" on India's eastern front, warning that terrorists would enter India from Bangladesh instead of Pakistan in coming decades, citing open Hizb-ut-Tahrir marches and Al-Qaida operatives speaking at public rallies
- Pakistan's ISI chief Lt General Asim Malik visited Dhaka in January 2025 — the first such visit by the head of Pakistan's intelligence agency in decades — and a dedicated ISI special cell was subsequently set up within the Pakistan High Commission in Dhaka after General Sahir Shamshad Mirza's October 2025 visit
- Bangladesh-Pakistan ties deepened rapidly with the revival of a direct Karachi-Chittagong shipping route after decades, the lifting of a 14-year suspension on direct commercial flights, and an agreement granting visa-free access to diplomats and military personnel
- Bangladesh army chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman, once clean-shaven and citing Lord Krishna's ideals of harmony in 2024, now sports a long Islamic beard and has urged the military to embrace Islamic values; a new army unit with four companies named after the first four Islamic Caliphs (Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, Ali) has been raised, and its battle cry changed from "Joy Bangla" to "Allahu Akbar"
- The Yunus interim administration lifted Hasina's ban on Jamaat-e-Islami (now Bangladesh's main opposition party), with experts telling IndiaToday.in the radicalisation drive was "low-key" under Hasina but accelerated significantly after her ouster
- Tarique Rahman's Bangladesh government chose China — not India — for the PM's first foreign visit, a break from tradition, though India remains Dhaka's second-largest trade partner and largest source of developmental aid
- Sheikh Hasina, making her first public address since her August 2024 ouster, announced she would return to Bangladesh this December despite the risk of imprisonment or death, while India said it was keeping a "close watch" but had not flagged Bangladesh as a terrorism threat
Why it matters: India faces a potential second hostile border, with the source documenting ISI infrastructure in Dhaka, a militarized Islamist shift inside the Bangladesh army, and the new government's diplomatic pivot toward China. The 4,000-km porous border remains India's core vulnerability, and the Yunus-era lifting of the Jamaat-e-Islami ban has reopened political space the previous government had closed. Bangladesh still depends on India for trade and developmental aid, which the source identifies as leverage Delhi must now convert into security cooperation.
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