ISLAMABAD: Shakib Al Hasan, the former captain of the Bangladesh cricket team and an ex-Awami League lawmaker, had his ancestral house in Magura attacked just hours after he participated virtually in a media interaction with former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, according to local police reports cited by Bangladeshi media.
Police said unidentified individuals hurled bricks at the residence, smashed windows, and threw petrol bombs, triggering a fire on the upper floor. The house was unoccupied at the time, and no injuries were reported. "An investigation is under way."
The attack came shortly after Hasina addressed a media event in New Delhi, her first public interaction since leaving Bangladesh in 2024.
Bangladesh's foreign ministry described the event as “an affront to the sovereignty of Bangladesh” and warned that allowing the program to be held from India could affect bilateral relations.
According to The Business Standard, Magura Sadar Police Station Officer-in-Charge Abdullah Al Mamun said that bricks shattered several windowpanes, no casualties were reported, and police had been deployed while an investigation continues.
Police said that several people vandalized Shakib Al Hasan’s property and attempted to set it on fire.
Shakib, regarded as one of Bangladesh's greatest cricketers, has remained outside the country since the 2024 political upheaval.
Hasina convicted of crimes against humanity
Authors of a UN human rights report in February 2025 found "reasonable grounds to believe that [Sheikh Hasina's] Government and its security and intelligence apparatus, together with violent elements associated with the Awami League, systematically engaged in serious human rights violations, including hundreds of extrajudicial killings, other use of force violations involving serious injuries to thousands of protesters, extensive arbitrary arrest and detention, and torture and other forms of ill-treatment."
Sheikh Hasina was convicted of crimes against humanity by Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal on November 17, 2025. She was found responsible for ordering a brutal, lethal security crackdown on student-led mass protests in 2024 that resulted in the deaths of up to 1,400 people and was issued the death sentence.
Hasina rejected the tribunal's ruling, calling the sentence legally void and politically motivated.
Hasina was convicted and sentenced in absentia in 2025, after she fled Bangladesh and entered self-imposed exile in India, where she has been living under the protection of the Indian government since August 2024.
