New Delhi: Tahawwur Hussain Rana, a key 2008 Mumbai attacks accused who landed in Delhi on Thursday, will be tried for waging war against the state, murder and terrorism among other charges that attract the death penalty after Indian and US authorities didn’t take capital punishment off the table during the extradition deal.
The sections under which the National Investigation Agency (NIA) named Rana as an accused and sought his extradition include section 120 B (criminal conspiracy), 121 (waging war), 121A (conspiracy to wage war), 302 (murder), 468 and 471 (forgery) of the Indian Penal Code and sections 18 and 20 of stringent Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), which deal with terrorist activity.
According to the assurances given by Indian government to the US, Rana cannot be tried for offences other than in which extradition was sought, and those offences that are crimes on American soil as well as India.
“All these offences under which NIA has charged Rana are crimes in US also,” said a senior NIA official, requesting anonymity. In effect, this means that the death penalty was not off the table when the extradition process was finalised.
Section 302 of IPC attracts the death sentence as does 121.
“There was no demand from the US side of not applying death sentence in Rana’s case because death penalty is there in America as well,” said the official quoted above.
The Indian government also assured the US authorities that he will be protected in jail, and won’t be tortured during his custodial period in India
India had assured Portugal while extraditing gangster Abu Salem in 2005 that he wouldn’t be sentenced to death. In the 1996 Purulia arms drop case, India gave an assurance while seeking extradition of Kim Davy that he would not be given a death sentence. Davy never came to India.
A Canadian citizen who was born in Pakistan in 1961, Rana lived at Campbell Avenue in Chicago before he was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on October 18, 2009, two weeks after his childhood friend and another co-conspirator David Coleman Headley was taken into custody on October 3, 2009.
Not only did he provide logistical, financial and other assistance to Headley and other co-conspirators for the 2009 Mumbai attacks but he was also in regular touch with Headley’s handlers in Pakistan, according to court documents.
Rana and Headley met when they attended a military boarding high school together in Pakistan and became close friends. After high school, Rana served as a doctor with the rank of Captain in the Pakistan army.
However, he later deserted the army and moved to Canada in 1990 and became a Canadian citizen, before moving to Chicago and opening several businesses, including the Immigration Law Center, which had offices in Chicago, New York and Toronto.
Meanwhile, Headley became involved with heroin trafficking and was twice convicted of drug offences. After Headley’s arrest in 1997 for importing heroin into the US, Rana posted his house as collateral for Headley’s bond. In fact, during their friendship, Rana held money for Headley and sent it to him as needed.
When Lashkar-e-Taiba was planning the 26/11 attacks, Headley told the terror outfit’s leaders about his friendship with Rana and latter’s ownership and operation of the Immigration Law Center and they agreed that Rana’s business would be an ideal front for their activities because it would allow Headley to travel freely in and out of India and to establish connections with powerful individuals in India. Rana then agreed to open a branch in Mumbai and assisted Headley in getting a business visa from India, as per the documents.
In July 2007, Headley travelled to Chicago and stayed with Rana and told him about the surveillance he conducted and would continue to conduct in India, including the videos he had taken of the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. Headley also told Rana about meeting co-conspirators in Pakistan and their reactions regarding the surveillance he conducted, as per the court documents.
Rana himself travelled to Mumbai, Agra, Hapur, Cochin and Ahmedabad with his wife between November 13 and 21, 2008, just before the attacks, the documents said. His extradition will now provide officers in NIA an opportunity to find out what he was doing at the time. .