New Delhi: Tahawwur Rana, one of the masterminds of the deadly 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, is being extradited to India after he exhausted his legal options in the US, according to news reports.
The Pakistani-Canadian national, 64, was an associate of the Pakistan-based Islamist terrorist group, the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). The US Supreme Court on Monday rejected his plea against his extradition to India to face trial, news reports said.
Earlier this year too, the US Supreme Court had rejected his plea against his extradition.
He was incarcerated in the US Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles, for 14 years. His extradition to India was approved in 2023 by the US Supreme Court.
The extradition of Rana had also been announced by President Donald Trump who had dubbed him “a very evil man”, in a joint press conference with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Washington, in February this year.
As per news reports, a multi-agency team from India has gone to the US and all paperwork and legalities are being completed with the US authorities required to facilitate the extradition process.
Rana, who had personally conducted reconnaissance and scouted Mumbai for picking the locations of the terror strikes ahead of the terror attacks, had also directly facilitated fellow jihadi David Coleman Headley—also known as Dawood Gilani—to travel to India using a Pakistani-American passport. The purpose was to identify potential targets for the Mumbai terror attacks being plotted by LeT in coordination with several officers of the Pakistan Army and Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI).
