AA Edit | Rana to Face Indian Law at Last

The extradition of Pakistani-Canadian terrorist Tahawwur Rana, wanted in India for the Mumbai terrorist attack of November 26, 2008, brings to an end the protracted legal fight India has been waging to bring one of the key players in the worst terror strike on Indian soil before the law. The government of India pursued the man for over 16 years while he was using every possible loophole in the legal system of the United States and evade arrest. It is to the credit of the governments in both the countries that India’s anti-terror

National Investigative Agency and various agencies involved in the process saw to it that the fugitive is brought before the law to answer for the lives of 166 innocent people.

While the optics of it would be reassuring for all Indians, especially the kin of those who lost their loved ones, what would help Indian authorities secure the country would be the information they can gather from the man who must know everything about what happened, including the role of the government of Pakistan in the attack on civilians in a neighbouring country. It remains to be seen how hard a nut he would be to crack, given that his handlers, including fellow accused David Coleman Headley, a Pakistani-American, is still to be extradited.

It hardly matters that Pakistan has distanced itself from Rana, a former captain of the Pakistani army. The role of that country as a fountainhead of terrorist projects executed not only in India but in several other countries is well documented. It still harbours several proclaimed terrorists including Hafiz Saeed, who Indian investigative agencies have found to be the mastermind of the Mumbai terror attack, and it has refused to heed India’s request to extradite them.

The extradition of Rana is, however, as much a lesson for Pakistan as it’s for the terrorists that the long arm of the law can hunt down all those who use terror as a means to advance their cause.