It is no secret that what has kept Sheikh Hasina going all these years was an uncompromising desire for revenge. All members of her immediate family, except her sister, Rehana, with whom she was on a tour abroad, were killed on 15 August 1975. While her sister stayed away from politics, Sheikh Hasina returned to Bangladesh in 1980 to take over her father's party, the Awami League. And she never gave up her mission to try the killers.
A few of them had actually confessed to the killings. Part of their bravado lay in the fact they were protected by an Indemnity Ordinance promulgated in 1975, which was later incorporated into the constitution through an amendment. It was believed a two-third majority would be required to repeal the amendment, but Awami League lawyers successfully challenged the case in the Supreme Court after the party came to power in 1996 and a simple majority proved enough to remove the constitutional security blanket against the trial.
Most of the accused had left the country almost immediately after Sheikh Hasina won the elections, but there were some who could not or did not. After two years of trial, on 8 November 1998, the District and Sessions Judge sentenced 15 army officers of various ranks to death by firing squad, and if the criminal code did not allow for that, to be hanged to death.
Sheikh Hasina had triumphed in the end. She never wavered once in her objective, proving once again that South Asian women who enter politics have more steel in them than most of their male counterparts. It was an emotional moment when, while talking to the press, she choked upon recalling the death by bullet of her youngest brother Sheikh Russell (named after the British philosopher Bertrand Russell), who would have been 32 years old now if he had survived the massacre on that fateful day in 1975.