Awami League President and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s 40th Homecoming Day is Monday. On this day in 1981, after a long exile, she returned to Bangladesh. She boarded an Indian Airlines Boeing at 4.30 pm and arrived at the then Dhaka Kurmitola Airport via Kolkata.
On 15 August 1975, Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his family were brutally killed. At that time, his two daughters Sheikh Hasina and Sheikh Rehana were in exile and they got relief from the killers.
She was later elected President of the Awami League in the absence of Sheikh Hasina at the session of the National Council of the Awami League held in Dhaka on 14, 15 and 16 February 1981. She then returned to the country on 17 May.
In response to the heartfelt love of about 1.5 million people present at the airport to welcome Sheikh Hasina, she said, “I have come to the country to take part in the liberation struggle from the side of the people of Bangladesh. I did not come to be the leader of Awami League. I want to be by your side as your sister, as a daughter, as an Awami League worker who believes in the ideals of Bangabandhu.”
News Room, May 17,2021