India Had Nothing To Gain: Why Hadi’s Killing Was Not An Indian Operation | India News

The attempted assassination of Bangladeshi student leader Motaleb Shikder in Khulna, just days after the killing of Sharif Osman Hadi in Dhaka, has added a grim new layer to Bangladesh’s political crisis. Two high-profile shootings in quick succession, in different cities, point to a widening pattern of internal political violence rather than a singular, isolated act. More importantly, they clarify a question that has hovered since Hadi’s death: who, if anyone, stood to gain strategically from his killing?

A sober, incentives-based analysis offers a clear answer. India did not.

Strategic reasoning begins with a simple test: who benefits, who pays, and whether the outcome advances a rational objective. In Hadi’s case, the immediate consequences were predictable and visible. His shooting triggered nationwide unrest, attacks on media houses, heightened street mobilization, and diplomatic friction at a time when Bangladesh was already navigating a fragile post-transition phase. These were not unforeseen side effects. They were the most likely outcomes of a political assassination in a volatile environment.

For India, each of these outcomes represents cost, not leverage.

Bangladesh’s stability is not a peripheral concern for New Delhi. It directly affects border management, internal security, trade corridors, transit arrangements, and the broader balance in eastern South Asia. A destabilized Bangladesh creates enforcement gaps that benefit violent spoilers, not neighboring states seeking predictability. When unrest spills from the capital into regional centres, as the Khulna attack now suggests, those risks compound rather than dissipate.

A rational strategic actor avoids actions that generate cascading instability it cannot calibrate or contain. The idea that India would deliberately ignite such a cycle runs counter to basic risk management logic.

The second flaw in the “external hand” thesis lies in misunderstanding how political violence works. Killing a prominent protest leader rarely neutralizes a movement. More often, it transforms an individual into a symbol. Death simplifies narratives, strips away political complexity, and concentrates emotion. Martyrdom is not an accident of politics; it is a force multiplier.

Hadi’s death followed this familiar trajectory. Nationwide mourning, intensified mobilization, and hardened rhetoric emerged almost immediately. The subsequent shooting of another student leader only reinforces this dynamic, signaling to supporters that the struggle is existential rather than transactional. For any actor seeking stability or de-escalation, martyr creation is strategically counterproductive.

This is precisely why state actors that prioritize regional order tend to avoid such interventions. The blowback is not only moral or diplomatic; it is operational. Once a movement shifts from negotiation to symbolism, control over outcomes narrows dramatically.

India’s broader strategic culture reinforces this logic. For decades, New Delhi has articulated a preference for sovereignty-respecting regional engagement, not because of idealism, but because intervention has historically proven costly and unpredictable. Attribution in politically charged environments is rarely clean. Even unproven allegations can shape public opinion, strain bilateral channels, and lock governments into defensive postures that outlast the original incident.

In Bangladesh’s case, the reputational risk alone would outweigh any conceivable tactical gain. Being perceived as a destabilizing force in a neighboring transition undermines India’s long-term credibility as a regional stabilizer—an asset built slowly and lost quickly.

The unfolding pattern of violence further weakens the logic of external orchestration. Two attacks in rapid succession, carried out in different locations, with no clear perpetrators identified, point far more convincingly toward domestic contestation, enforcement gaps, and violent spoilers operating within a stressed political system. Transitional periods are particularly vulnerable to such dynamics, as rival actors test boundaries and institutions struggle to reassert control.

Crucially, internal explanations are sufficient. They do not require imported conspiracies to make sense of events. When the simplest explanation fits the facts, adding external actors adds noise, not clarity.

This matters because misdiagnosis carries its own cost. Externalizing blame may offer temporary political comfort, but it diverts attention from the hard work of stabilization: credible investigations, institutional reform, accountability, and de-escalation. The longer violence is framed as something imposed from outside, the longer those internal corrections are delayed.

Seen through this lens, the conclusion is straightforward. Targeting Hadi would not have advanced India’s interests. It would have damaged them. The unrest that followed, now compounded by a second shooting, illustrates why political assassinations are blunt instruments that rarely serve strategic ends.

Bangladesh’s path back to stability will depend not on identifying foreign villains, but on confronting its internal fault lines. Strategy, after all, is not about what sounds plausible in the heat of crisis, but about what aligns with incentives, outcomes, and long-term interest.