NEW DELHI: Tahawwur Rana (64), one of the main plotters of the 26/11 Mumbai attack, is being kept on “suicide watch” in a highly secure cell within National Investigation Agency (NIA) headquarters here after a special court granted his 18-day custody to the anti-terror agency.
The Pakistani-Canadian, who was brought here on Thursday evening following his extradition from the US, is under 24/7 human and CCTV surveillance. The NIA HQ on Lodhi Road has been blanketed in multi-layered security. “Rana has been kept in a 14×14 cell on the ground floor. He will be allowed only a soft-tip pen to write so that he can’t harm himself,” a source said.
On Friday, NIA began questioning Rana to unravel the larger conspiracy behind the terror strike. The interrogation is likely to focus on, besides his connection with ISI, involvement with sleeper cells in India, particularly those linked to his associate, David Coleman Headley, alias Daood Gilani. Headley is suspected to have recruited sleeper cells in Pushkar, Goa, Delhi and other places, sources said.
Modi govt didn’t initiate process, has benefited from UPA move: Cong | page 14
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New Delhi: On a day Mumbai terror attack accused Tahawwur Hussain Rana was extradited from the US to India, Congress said Modi govt did not initiate the process and in fact benefited from the “mature, consistent and strategic diplomacy” that began under UPA.
In a statement, former union minister P Chidambaram said that “while Modi govt is rushing to take credit for this development, the truth is far from their spin.”
“This extradition is not the result of any grandstanding, it is a testament to what the Indian state can achieve when diplomacy, law enforcement, and international cooperation are pursued sincerely and without any kind of chest-thumping,” Chidambaram said. He added, “It is the culmination of a decade-and-a-half of painstaking diplomatic, legal and intelligence efforts initiatedby UPA govt in close coordination with the US.”
“The coursework began on Nov 11, 2009, when NIA registered a case in New Delhi against David Coleman Headley (US citizen), Rana (Canadian citizen), and others involved in the 26/11 conspiracy. Canada’s foreign minister confirmed collaboration with Indian agencies, thanks to UPA’s effective foreign policy,” he said.
In 2012, external affairs minister Salman Khurshid and foreign secretary Ranjan Mathai took up the matter of Headley’s and Rana’s extradition with US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and under secretary Wendy Sherman, , which Chidambaram called a “textbook example” of handling international justice through diplomacy.
Even after the change in govt in 2014, it was the institutional efforts already in motion that kept the case alive, he added. Chidambaram said that in Feb 2025, PM Modi and US President Trump ” tried to take credit for what was essentially the result of years of UPA-era groundwork”.
