Tahawwur Rana arrested on arrival in India, appears before NIA court, sent to 18-day custody

NEW DELHI: Tahawwur Hussain Rana, who played a key role in plotting the 2008 terror attack on Mumbai that claimed 166 lives, was arrested by NIA here on Thursday after his arrival from US on a special flight.
The Pakistani-Canadian terrorist was produced before special NIA judge Chander Jit Singh, who held an in-camera hearing on NIA counsel and special public prosecutor Narender Mann’s plea for a 20-day remand. Rana was represented by Piyush Sachdeva, provided to him by Delhi Legal Services Authority. After the hearing, the court sent Rana to 18-day NIA custody.
Rana’s extradition process was nothing short of a nail-biter with fears of sabotage looming till the flight touched down at Palam airport’s technical area. The home ministry and the office of NSA, along with Intelligence Bureau, constantly monitored the flight ferrying Rana, taking precautions to thwart any attempt to stop him from landing in the grasp of Indian agencies.

Exercising utmost caution in extraditing Tahawwur Hussain Rana, a dummy code was generated for the chartered aircraft, a Gulfstream G550, ferrying him to India to avoid detection on public flight trackers and alleviate threats of an attack. The aircraft took off from Los Angeles in the early hours of Wednesday and landed in New Delhi around 6 pm, after a pit stop in Romania.
Rana, along with his close school friend and fellow jihadi Daood Gilani aka David Coleman Headley, had left Mumbai on Nov 19, 2008, just a week before a gang of jihadi terrorists belonging to and motivated by LeT and trained by serving officers of Pakistan army landed on the Worli shore to carry out an attack in which 166 people were killed and which left the nation traumatised. The massacre marked the execution of a plan that Rana and Headley helped draw by selecting the targets to be struck.
As Rana stepped on the tarmac in prison browns with NIA personnel clinging to him, he looked far from the unassuming businessman he had posed as when he checked into a Powai hotel in Mumbai in 2008. He had also visited Agra, Hapur, Kochi and other cities during this trip, supposedly to promote his immigration business, though NIA suspects the trips may have been a cover to scout for potential terror recruits for LeT.
Rana, for long a strategic asset for Lashkar-e-Taiba and Pakistan’s military intelligence complex, was placed under arrest at the airport, made to undergo a medical examination and whisked to court through a green corridor amid heavy security comprising a 20-vehicle cavalcade and SWAT commandos.
On the plane back to India, Rana was seated in the middle with NSG commandos on all seats surrounding him, followed by senior NIA officials. Just after touchdown, the NIA acknowledged the assistance of US Sky Marshals who are assigned with secure transportation of federal prisoners, including inmate transfers via air.
In a statement, the NIA termed Rana a key conspirator and confirmed his extradition. “Rana was being held in judicial custody in the US pursuant to proceedings initiated under the India-US extradition treaty. The extradition finally came through after Rana exhausted all legal avenues to stay the move. The district court for the Central District of California had ordered his extradition on May 16, 2023. Rana then filed multiple litigations in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, all of which were rejected,” it said.
Extradition proceedings were initiated between the two countries after India eventually secured a surrender warrant for the wanted terrorist from the US govt.
The extradition finally came through after Rana’s various litigations and appeals, including an emergency application before the US Supreme Court, were rejected with the active assistance of the US department of justice’s Office of International Affairs, US Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California, US Marshals Service, FBI’s Legal Attache Office in New Delhi, and US department of state’s Office of the Legal Adviser for Law Enforcement, the NIA said.
For NIA investigators, the challenge will be to get Rana to reveal more than what he has already told US authorities. His interrogation will be aimed at getting to the bottom of the Mumbai attack conspiracy and exposing the role of Pakistan-based LeT masterminds like Hafiz Saeed, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi and others in planning and remote-controlling one of the deadliest terror strikes against India.