Bangladesh’s deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina was on Monday sentenced to death in absentia by a special tribunal for “crimes against humanity” committed during the wide-spread protests against her government in July last year. Hasina, 78, who has been living in India since her government was toppled on August 5 last year, was sentenced by the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT-BD).

The ICT also sentenced to death former home minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal in absentia and former inspector general of police Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun, who turned state witness, to five years of imprisonment in the same case. A defiant Hasina, meanwhile, charged that the judgement has been made by a “rigged tribunal” established and presided over by an “unelected government with no democratic mandate”.