- Rana handed out to India for 2008 Mumbai -attack involvement.
- It is the first such American transfer to India in a terrorist taste.
- The US Supreme Court rejected challenges for extradition.
New Delhi: A Canadian businessman accused of having helped orchestrate the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, one of India’s deadliest, arrived in New Delhi on Thursday, after the United States handed him over in the first such transfer in a terrorism.
Tahawwur Rana, 64, a doctor-facing businessman, was handed out in connection with the Mumbai attacks in November 2008, killing more than 160 people.
“The National Investigation Agency secured the extradition on Thursday … after years of sustained and coordinated efforts to bring the most important conspirator … to justice,” said Nia, India’s anti-terror agent.
He was accompanied by Indian security agencies after his petitions who challenged the extradition were rejected by the US Supreme Court.
Rana’s extradition is a “great success” by Prime Minister Narendra Modi government diplomacy, the Indian domestic minister Amit Shah said Wednesday.
“It is the responsibility of the Indian government to bring all those who have abused the country and people in India,” he published at X.
Trump announces transfer
India formally sought RANA’s custody in June 2020, and President Donald Trump announced Rana’s transfer in February this year during a joint press conference with Modi in Washington.
Rana was sentenced to 14 years in prison in the United States in 2013 for supporting Lashkar-E-Taiba.
“As far as our record indicates, he (RANA) did not even apply for renewal for his Pakistani employment documents in the past two decades,” Shatqat Ali Khan, a spokesman for Pakistan’s foreign office, said on a media briefing on Thursday.
Rana’s lawyer has said that Rana was a “good man and was sucked into something.”
Over the course of three days in November 2008, ten highly armed attackers targeted larger landmarks across Mumbai, including two luxury hotels, a Jewish center and the main train station that killed 166 people.
