RISE, RULE, RUIN

For nearly two decades, Sheikh Hasina’s name moved with the pulse of Bangladesh, sometimes steady, sometimes storm-tossed.

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To her supporters, she was the architect of a modern, rising Bangladesh—an indefatigable force who delivered growth, infrastructure, and global visibility. To her opponents, she embodied authoritarian drift, increasingly intolerant of dissent and insulated from the street’s anger. But even in a political landscape defined by sharp divides, few could have imagined the extraordinary twist that would one day place her in the dock of the very tribunal she once created. When the International Crimes ‘Tribunal pronounced the death sentence against the 77-year-old former prime minister in absentia, it marked one of the most dramatic chapters in South Asia's contemporary politics and sealed a stunning reversal of political fate for the world’s longest-serving female head of government.

Hasina’s trajectory was never ordinary, born as she was into the family that would define Bangladesh’ very identity. Born on September 28, 1947, in Tungipara in the then East Pakistan, she was the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman—the revered Bangabandhu, who led Bangladesh to independence in 1971 with India’s crucial support. She studied Bengali literature at Dhaka University and was deeply involved in student politics, laying the foundation for a lifelong engagement with public life. In 1968, she married nuclear scientist M. A. Wazed Miah, whose quiet scholarly world stood in sharp contrast to the turbulence that would shape her political destiny. Together they raised two children, Sajeeb Wazed Joy and Saima Wazed Putul, and remained a steady pair until Wazed's passing in 2009.