LONDON — Imperious Tulip Siddiq railed against a Bangladeshi corruption verdict on Monday after she was sentenced in absentia to two years for bribery by a special court in the capital, Dhaka, and her aunt, deposed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, was jailed for five years and her mother, Sheikh Rehana, seven years in a government land case that is contested. She says the trial was politically motivated and held in secret without her knowledge or a lawyer, as part of a broader purge of the former ruling family, Dec. 1, 2025
Tulip Siddiq dismisses charges as a political ‘circus’
Siddiq and 16 others were convicted by Bangladesh’s Special Judge’s Court in Dhaka for violating rules to obtain a 13,610-square-foot plot in the state-run Purbachal New Town housing scheme, Reuters said. The court gave five years to each of the 14 co-accused, fined all 17 with 100,000 taka, and withdrew the land allocation, The Daily Star, a local outlet in Bangladesh, reported.
Tulip Siddiq, 43, did not attend court and claims she was never properly informed of the charges against her. She contends that the identity documents used by prosecutors are forgeries and that a lawyer she had hired in Bangladesh was threatened, allegations outlined in an explainer by The Guardian. Denouncing an “absurd and ludicrous” prosecution from “start to finish,” she has labelled the Dhaka proceedings a “kangaroo” process, while maintaining that her focus is on matters in her London constituency.
The decision on Monday is one thread in the fast-moving legal onslaught against Hasina and her family. She faced the death penalty on Nov. 17 after being found guilty by Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal over a deadly quelling of a street protest last year that was led by students, according to previous Reuters coverage of Hasina’s arrest and sentencing. Less than two weeks later, a Dhaka court sentenced her to another 21 years’years’ imprisonment in three corruption cases relating to land plots of the same Purbachal project,, according to Al Jazeera’s later report.
Hasina’s fall from power began in July and August 2024, when student protests against a civil service quota system grew into a national uprising against her 15-year rule. After security forces killed and wounded scores of demonstrators, she resigned and fled to India on Aug. 5, according to a 2024 report by Human Rights Watch. At least 30 years old now, the emergency-era system is no longer in place, and the caretaker government of Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus has presided over a fraught transition that — according to a situation update from the European Union Agency for Asylum (dated 2025) — remains unstable ahead of anticipated elections early next year.
Interim officials present the Purbachal ruling against Tulip Siddiq as evidence that even such once-untouchable members of the Sheikh family can be brought to book. The Anti-Corruption Commission has filed cases against dozens of land allocations and state contracts tied to Hasina’s tenure, and Monday’s ruling cancelled the contested Purbachal plot altogether, the Associated Press news agency said. But rights campaigners say in-absentia trials, curbs on the right of defence and the banning of Hasina’s Awami League threaten to make accountability victor’s justice.
The ruling nonetheless deepens a political headache for Tulip Siddiq, who resigned as Economic Secretary to the Treasury in January 2025 amid increasing scrutiny over her family’s finances and is unlikely to land in a Bangladeshi jail. No extradition treaty exists between the U.K. and Bangladesh, making any attempt to send her back a legal and political challenge. However, European outlet Euronews reported that the judge had accused her of “corruptly influencing” Hasina to have land given to her mother and siblings.
