The wheels of justice may turn slowly but they do churn on. India has every right to feel rightfulness will be served as a California appeals court in the US ruled that Tahawwur Hussain Rana, a conspirator in the worst terrorism attack India suffered in its modern history in the 26/11 assault on Mumbai in 2008, can be extradited to India.
More than a decade and half may has passed since a boatload of Pakistan terrorists laid their siege of Mumbai and in the process took 166 lives indiscriminately and left scars on the nation’s psyche that may never heal. It was on the day that Ajmal Kasab, one of the captured terrorists, was executed that the nation may have had a sense of closure on this heinous plot by a perfidious Pakistan.
Rana may have been peripherally associated with the main 26/11 conspirator and American terrorist David Coleman Headley (born Daood Syed Gilani) but he did facilitate his visa and visit to India on a reconnaissance trip to the Taj Mahal hotel. After all, had not the former Pakistan Army doctor said that the people of India deserved the 26/11 attack?
With the passage of time, people may have wearied of the legal hunt for these criminals with a terrorist mindset, but India, still smarting from such a breach of the peace of Mumbai, had persisted in providing sufficient competent evidence to support Rana’s extradition, a first favourable ruling on which came in May 2023.
It was for his role in the conspiracy to attack India that the Chicago resident Rana was first apprehended in the US, but later acquitted of Mumbai attack charges since he may have only facilitated Coleman Headley’s visa to India. It was for his involvement in a Lashkar-e-Taiba plot to bomb a Danish newspaper that he was convicted in the US in 2013 for 14 years.
Wanted by India for waging war, murder, terrorism and forgery, it is only right that he faces trial here too. This legal fight may take longer as the process could drag on in appeals, but there is no denying that India has persevered to bring to justice those who plotted. Many conspirators and handlers in Pakistan may be protected by the terror-sponsoring state, but India’s search for a full closure on the 26/11 events is wholly justified.
