The US has shared new information with India about the role and activities of Mumbai 26/11 co-conspirator Tahawar Rana as part of a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) request by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), people familiar with the matter said on Monday.
Without going into detail on the new details received from the US, an agency official added that India “has received some important information from the US under the Mutual Legal Assistance Agreement regarding Rana’s role, which is being analyzed for further action.”
Rana, 64, a former captain in the Pakistani army who worked as a medical officer before moving to Canada, played a key role in the Mumbai terrorist attacks. He was brought to India from Los Angeles on a private plane on April 10 last year and was formally arrested after a five-year legal battle for his extradition, which was supported by the US government. He was charged with murder, terrorism, attempted murder, criminal conspiracy and waging war against the country.
The NIA filed a supplementary charge sheet in July last year in the 26/11 attacks based on Rana’s interrogation, documentary evidence and statements of several witnesses. Evidence collected by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) including intercepted conversations and emails between Tahawar Rana, his childhood friend and co-accused David Coleman Headley and Lashkar-e-Taiba planners in Pakistan, is part of the NIA’s charges in the case. The Pakistani-Canadian doctor is currently in Tihar Jail in Delhi.
Other than conspiring with the Lashkar-e-Taiba leadership and Headley to carry out the 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai, which left 166 people dead during an attack that lasted about 60 hours, the NIA was looking into Rana’s role in the LeT’s plans to carry out attacks in other parts of the country around that time.
After being repatriated, the NIA last year interrogated Rana at length about his encrypted communications with co-accused Headley, Major Abdul Rehman Hashim Syed alias “Pasha” and Sajid Majid alias Sajid Mir, as they discussed new targets in India after the 2008 attacks.
The NIA has alleged in court documents that Rana was part of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks plot since 2006 and visited India between November 13 and 21, 2008. Just before the attacks, he was in Dubai and met Pasha and later went to China. From China, he returned to the United States on the first day of the attacks, November 26, 2008.
The broader 26/11 conspiracy included 10 defendants, seven of whom were based in Pakistan during the 26/11 attacks. Apart from Rana and Headley, the Pakistan-based conspirators include Hafiz Saeed, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi (LeT operations chief), Sajid Majeed alias Sajid Mir (LeT commander), Abdul Rehman Hashim Syed alias Pasha (retired Pakistani major), Major Iqbal and Major Sameer Ali (ISI officers), and Abdul Rehman Makki (former LeT deputy chief who died in Lahore last December). And Ilyas Kashmiri (Al-Qaeda leader who was killed in a US drone strike in June 2011).
While several Pakistani conspirators – Hafiz Saeed were sentenced to 78 years in prison in 2020, Lakhvi to three consecutive five-year terms in 2021, and Sajid Mir to a reported eight years in prison – Indian officials maintain that they continue to operate freely under the auspices of Pakistan’s spy agency Inter Services Intelligence.
