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US Supreme Court approves extradition of Tahawwur Rana

Harshad Dewangan 25 January 2025

The way has been cleared to bring Mumbai 26/11 attack accused Tahawwur Rana to India. The US Supreme Court has approved Rana's extradition. The court has rejected the review petition against his conviction. India was seeking the extradition of Pakistani-origin Canadian citizen Tahawwur Rana. Rana is wanted in the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks case.

According to media reports, this was the last legal chance for Tahawwur Rana not to be extradited to India. Earlier, Rana had lost the legal battle in several federal courts, including the US Court of Appeals for the Northern Circuit in San Francisco.

Rana had filed a petition for 'certiorari' in the US Supreme Court on November 13 last year. On January 21, a day after Donald Trump was sworn in as US President, the Supreme Court rejected Rana's petition. The Supreme Court said, the petition is not accepted.

According to media reports, Tahawwur Rana is currently in custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles. Let us tell you that the US court, while giving its verdict in August 2024, had approved sending Rana to India under the India-US extradition treaty, but the matter remained stuck in the paperwork. Indian agencies had presented all the evidence in the court, after which the court gave approval.

The US FBI arrested Rana from Chicago in 2009. He was working in India as an operative of Pakistan's intelligence agency ISI and terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba. Rana had helped the main mastermind of the attack, David Coleman Headley, in plotting and recceing the attack. India had presented evidence of this in the US court, which clearly showed Rana's involvement.

It is worth noting that on 26 November 2008, Mumbai was shaken by the firing of terrorists. 166 people including six American citizens were killed in the terrorist attacks, while a large number of people were injured.