New Delhi: There’s been a lot of talk—between India-Canada and India-US—over issues of terrorism inside India. However, there is a more tricky conversation that has now gone on for more than 16 years. And that’s a conversation between India and America that involves a Canadian citizen, Tahawwur Rana, who’s also linked to the 26/11 terror attacks.
Rana—a former Pakistan Army doctor—was an accomplice of 26/11 convict David Coleman Headley, and both were caught and put on trial. In their US trials, they were tried on two different sets of charges. One charge was an aborted plan for an attack on Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that had published the controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, and the second was the conspiracy to plan the 26/11 attacks.
While Headley was convicted on both, Rana was only convicted for the Jyllands-Posten plot due to a lack of adequate evidence to convict him of conspiracy in the Mumbai attacks. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison, later being dramatically released in 2020, after just over seven years, under the pretext of COVID.
A concerned Indian government then filed applications that sent him back to provisional imprisonment in June 2020. Imprisoned since then, his extradition proceedings have gone on. He now has an appeal in the US Supreme Court and is likely to come to India by December.
In Episode 1541 of #CutTheClutter, ThePrint’s Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta looks at his role as an accomplice to Headley, his earlier convictions, links to the ISI, why he was not convicted for 26/11, his 2019 parole and why his likely extradition to India is significant.
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