Tahawwur Rana in NIA custody after extradition from US: 10 points to know

📌 Rana’s extradition marks a major breakthrough in India’s prolonged quest to bring every perpetrator of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks to justice. The siege, carried out by ten heavily armed Pakistani terrorists, left 166 people dead and hundreds injured across landmark sites including the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, CST railway station, and the Chabad House.

📌 Rana is believed to be a close aide of David Coleman Headley, the Pakistani-American terrorist who conducted reconnaissance missions for the attacks. Headley, now serving a prison sentence in the US, had testified that Rana provided both logistical and financial support for the Mumbai plot.

📌Indian agencies have long maintained that Rana had deep connections with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the country’s Army, and the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) — the outfit behind the 26/11 attack. Pakistan has asserted that Rana is a Canadian national and has not renewed his Pakistani documents for over two decades.

📌 With charges ranging from waging war against India and murder to criminal conspiracy and forgery, Rana’s arrest is expected to open critical leads into the planning and execution of the attacks.

#UPDATE: The National Investigation Agency on Thursday evening formally arrested Tahawwur Hussain Rana, the key conspirator in the deadly 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, immediately after his arrival at IGI airport following his successful extradition from the US: NIA.@IndianExpress https://t.co/HpqWZ7LiaD pic.twitter.com/JBgnYePEHF

— Mahender Singh Manral (@mahendermanral) April 10, 2025

📌Rana is undergoing a medical check-up, following which he will be taken to the NIA headquarters for questioning. He would then be produced in a court.

📌 Rana was taken into custody by the FBI in October 2009 in the US on charges of aiding an abortive terror plot targeting a Danish newspaper and supporting the Lashkar-e-Taiba. He was convicted two years later but managed to stall his extradition through appeals in American courts — all of which were eventually denied.

📌 In its supplementary chargesheet filed in 2023, the Mumbai police said Rana came to India days before the terror attacks and stayed in a five-star hotel between November 11 and 21, 2008. The attacks took place on November 26, 2008.

📌 The police, in their chargesheet, also attached e-mails sent by Headley to Rana in which the former is seeking instructions from the latter. The police said that Rana was the link between Headley and the Pakistani intelligence service ISI.

📌 Rana is accused of conspiring with David Coleman Headley and operatives of designated terrorist organisations Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Harkat-ul-Jihadi Islami (HUJI) along with other Pakistan-based co-conspirators, to carry out the terror attacks in Mumbai in 2008, the NIA said in a statement.