[Source: Reuters]

Long-time Bangladeshi leader Sheikh Hasina had not resigned as prime minister before fleeing this week to India as anti-government protesters marched on her official residence, her son and adviser told Reuters early on Saturday.

Hasina has been sheltering in New Delhi since Monday following an uprising that killed about 300 people, many of them students, ending her uninterrupted rule of 15 years in the country of 170 million people.

“My mother never officially resigned. She didn’t get the time,” Hasina’s son Sajeeb Wazed told Reuters from Washington.

“She had planned to make a statement and submit her resignation. But then the protesters started marching on the prime minister’s residence. And there was no time. My mother wasn’t even packed. As far as the constitution goes, she is still the prime minister of Bangladesh.”

He said though the president had dissolved parliament after consulting with military chiefs and opposition politicians, the formation of a caretaker government without the prime minister actually formally resigning “can be challenged in court”.

Wazed also said Hasina’s Awami League party would contest the next election, which he said must be held within three months.

“I’m confident the Awami League will come to power. If not, we will be the opposition. Either way is fine,” he said.

He said he was encouraged by a recent statement from Khaleda Zia, chief of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and a Hasina foe, that there should be no revenge or vengeance after Hasina fled.