A few months before her fall as the Bangladesh Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina had claimed that a plot was being hatched to topple her government. Also, that she may be assassinated just like her father and independence hero Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

She had also alleged a “white man’s” plot to carve a new “Christian country” out of Myanmar and Bangladesh.

Hasina said she was offered an easy re-election in January – which she did achieved anyway in an election boycotted by her rival Khaleda Zia’s party. The condition was that she had to allow a foreign country build an airbase in Bangladesh. Hasina suggested this was one reason why her government had always been in some kind of trouble.

“If I allowed a certain country to build an airbase in Bangladesh, then I would have had no problem,” she had said in May. The offer came from a “white man”, she said, but fell short of naming any country. “It may appear it is aimed at only one country, but it is not. I know where else they intend to go.”

Hasina resigned and fled Bangladesh amid deadly protests yesterday as the country’s military took over.

On her claim that many foreigners had their eyes on Bangladesh, she had said, “Like East Timor…they will carve out a Christian country, taking parts of Bangladesh (Chattogram) and Myanmar with a base in the Bay of Bengal.”

However, she had vowed not to bow down to any pressure. Bangladesh saw one of its deadliest demonstrations on Sunday with more than 100 protesters dying in clashes with the police. The death toll since the beginning of the protests has crossed 400.

The protesters trespassed into the Prime Minister’s residence on Monday, but Hasina avoided a direct confrontation, having already resigned and fled the country in a military plane. Bangladesh’s army chief called a press conference hours later and announced that an interim government would be formed to run the country.