Over a month after she fled to India, it has come to light that the Bangladesh Air Force plane used by former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to flee the country had its transponder switched off to hide its location and flight path.
A copy of flight AJAX1431's progress strip obtained by Dhaka-based The Daily Star also revealed that the flight headed towards Kolkata before taking a detour to Hindon Air Force Base in Ghaziabad as it wanted to leave Bangladeshi airspace as early as possible. The Dhaka-Delhi route would require flying over Rakshahi and would require staying several more minutes in Bangladeshi airspace.
The report said the flight took off as a training flight from Dhaka just 30 minutes before the protesters stormed the Prime Minister's residence. Its transponders, which transmit location, heading, altitude and speed, and the automatic geolocator system, were not turned on until the aircraft was close to West Bengal.
The geolocator system was turned only after it reached waypoint 'BEMAK' on the Dhaka-Kolkata route, following which the aircraft suddenly showed up on radar. The Indian authorities had given the flight the squawk code 1431. This is a unique four-digit code assigned by the ATC to each aircraft operating in its airspace and the crew has to manually enter the code into the aircraft's transponder.
Though it was invisible to the secondary radar, the cockpit crew had maintained continuous communication with different Air Traffic Controllers (ATCs), including the Bangladesh Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport's traffic controller and the Kolkata area ATC.
The flight took off and was given an altitude of 24,000 feet. The transcript also revealed the Dhaka ATC alerting the cockpit crew about traffic, an Airbus A320 heading for Dhaka. It said the Airbus was above them and was descending to 26,000 feet.
Soon afterwards, Dhaka ATC said, "AJAX 1431 change to Kolkata control".
However, Air Commodore AFM Atiquzzaman, who was at the Dhaka ATC tower when Hasina's plane took off, told The Daily Star that he had no clue as to who was inside the flight. "At that moment I had no idea who was inside that flight. I was there in the tower just doing my normal duty when I saw an Air Force training flight taking off. I did not know of course who was inside," Atiquzzaman told The Daily Star.
The report added that neither Hasina, nor her sister Sheikh Rehana, nor the flight crew and Special Security Force (SSF) members went through immigration before departing Dhaka. Hasina has a diplomatic passport and is not required to get immigration clearance.