Greater than 15 years after Mumbai was dropped at its knees by one of many deadliest terrorist assaults in Indian historical past, a key conspirator within the 26/11 carnage, Tahawwur Rana, has lastly set foot on Indian soil. The 64-year-old, extradited from the USA late Wednesday after he exhausted all authorized avenues, was flown into Delhi on a particular plane amid tight safety.
Heavy safety has been deployed to ferry the 26/11 Mumbai terror assault plotter, who’s being extradited from the US almost 16 years after his arrest, to the NIA workplace, with a bullet-proof car among the many cavalry. Delhi Police’s Particular Cell has deployed SWAT personnel to escort Rana safely, an official stated.
Rana’s extradition marks a serious breakthrough in India’s extended quest to convey each perpetrator of the 2008 Mumbai terror assaults to justice. The siege, carried out by ten closely armed Pakistani terrorists, left 166 folks useless and lots of injured throughout landmark websites together with the Taj Mahal Palace Resort, CST railway station, and the Chabad Home.
Rana is believed to be an in depth aide of David Coleman Headley, the Pakistani-American terrorist who carried out reconnaissance missions for the assaults. Headley, now serving a jail sentence within the US, had testified that Rana offered each logistical and monetary assist for the Mumbai plot. Indian businesses have lengthy maintained that Rana had deep connections with Pakistan’s Inter-Providers Intelligence (ISI), the nation’s Military, and the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) — the outfit behind the 26/11 assault.
Pakistan has asserted that Rana is a Canadian nationwide and has not renewed his Pakistani paperwork for over 20 years.
With expenses starting from waging struggle in opposition to India and homicide to prison conspiracy and forgery, Rana’s arrest is anticipated to open important leads into the planning and execution of the assaults. After preliminary questioning in Delhi, he will probably be offered earlier than a neighborhood courtroom after which moved to Mumbai, the place senior officers will formally start his interrogation.
Rana was taken into custody by the FBI in October 2009 within the US on expenses of aiding an abortive terror plot concentrating on a Danish newspaper and supporting the Lashkar-e-Taiba. He was convicted two years later however managed to stall his extradition via appeals in American courts — all of which have been finally denied.