According to accounts, the 76-year-old fled to India on a helicopter on Monday as thousands of protesters assaulted her official residence in Dhaka, the capital.
This ends the tenure of Bangladesh’s longest-serving prime minister, who has held power for more than two decades.
Ms Hasina is credited with guiding the South Asian country’s economic success, but in recent years she has been accused of becoming dictatorial.
How did Sheikh Hasina rise to power?
Ms Hasina was born into a Muslim household in East Bengal in 1947, and politics was in her blood.
Her father was Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh’s ‘Father of the Nation’, who led the country’s independence from Pakistan in 1971 and served as its first president.
At the time, Ms. Hasina had already established herself as a student leader at Dhaka University.
In 1975, Mr. Rahman and the majority of his family were slain as part of a military coup. Only Ms. Hasina and her younger sister survived because they were traveling overseas at the time.
After living in exile in India, Ms. Hasina returned to Bangladesh in 1981 and became the leader of her father’s political party, the Awami League.
