Update Time :
10:48:43 pm, Wednesday, 20 August 2025
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Former home minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal holds meetings with “high-level functionaries of the Indian establishment” every week by travelling to Delhi from his rented apartment in Kolkata, reports The Print.
The Print made the claim quoting another fugitive Awami League (AL) lawmaker, who is among the over a thousand party activists to flee to India since the political upheaval in Dhaka on 5 August last year.
During his Delhi visit, Khan also meets senior Awami League leaders there. Upon his return to Kolkata, Kamal meets party colleagues almost every day, the AL lawmaker told The Print, preferring anonymity.
According to the former MP, Khan has been tasked with keeping up the morale of leaders and party members.
“We have not come here to relax and stay indefinitely. We have come here to stay alive and be ready to fight tomorrow,” is the former minister’s daily message to party colleagues who drop in at his Kolkata apartment.
Mohammad A Arafat, former minister of state for Information and Broadcasting, also does not enjoy leisure time in India.
“Bangladesh has been staring at the abyss since Hasina left,” he told The Print over the phone.
“I have this one goal: to make things right in Bangladesh again. I really don’t have any hobbies now, or the time to keep myself engaged in any form of entertainment,” he added.
“I don’t even have any particular time to sleep. Sometimes, I get confused between dawn and dusk. Daily life is all about work, work, and more work,” Arafat said.
According to a former central committee member of the banned political party, who did not wish to be named, Awami League politicians and workers aren’t the only ones in exile. They’re joined by like-minded journalists, civil society activists, army officers, law enforcement officers, and diplomats who had to flee Bangladesh “after a witch hunt against them by the Mohammad Yunus administration”.
“If you count them, the number will exceed 2,000,” the Awami League leader said.
They are parts of a massive network Awami League created during its 15-year authoritarian rule over Bangladesh to entrench and extend its regime.
They told The Print that their lives have fallen into a pattern: Fajr namaz, gym sessions or morning walks, online meetings every evening with Awami League leaders and workers within Bangladesh and across the globe, and hopes of return.
A former lawmaker from Cox’s Bazar told The Print: “I wake up at the crack of dawn and offer my Fajr prayers at the apartment [in New Town of Kolkata] I share with another Awami League MP. Then we both head to the neighbourhood fitness studio, which is rather impressive. I do weight training while my flatmate has enrolled for Pilates classes.”
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