With the decks being cleared for the extradition of Mumbai 26/11 attacks accused Tahawwur Rana, one could expect several chilling details to emerge when he is investigated by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in India.
While a lot of details relating to the Mumbai 26/11 attack are well known, there would be one aspect that would be revealed when Rana is questioned upon him being deported to India and placed in the Tihar jail in Delhi.
When the investigations into the attack commenced the agencies in the country did not have a clue about either Rana or his accomplice David Headley. It was only when the FBI arrested both of them that their role in the attacks which claimed 166 lives were known.
While other details that went into the planning and execution would be sought by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), the big question as to what Rana was doing in India days before the attack would be revealed.
Rana had visited India and travelled to places both in the North and South of India before the attack. Whether he was in India to conduct reconnaissance or was he just doing last minute checks to ensure that all that they had planned was in place and the attack would eventually become successful.
However, the most important aspect would be Rana’s visit to Kochi. The visit came in the backdrop of a statement by Al-Qaeda’s Ilyas Kashmiri who had said that he wanted cadres from Kerala to carry out his ambitious Ghaza-e-Hind project.
Rana’s Kochi visit
Rana’s footsteps in India can be traced to Delhi, Agra, Hapur, Kochi, Ahmedabad and Mumbai. He was in the country with his wife Samraz Rana Akhtar between November 13 and November 21 2008.
While the fact that he had visited India is known to the NIA, the reason behind it remains a mystery. Details of his visit were revealed after the NIA learnt that Rana had submitted business sponsor letters from the Immigrant Law Center and property tax payment notice from the Cook County as his address proof.
In 2011 when the NIA began investigating the case said that Rana and Headley had set some future goals for India. At that time investigations suggested Rana had visited Kochi to conduct a reconnaissance and the locals may have helped him. It could have been an exercise to lay the ground work, investigations had also found.
It was at around the same time that Ilyas Kashmiri, the head of the Al-Qaeda’s 313 Brigade had said that he wanted to recruit people from Kerala to carry out his ambitious Ghaza-e-Hind project. This loosely translates to the destruction of India.
A Rana link to Kashmiri cannot be ruled out at all at this stage. It is a documented fact that David Headley had initially worked with Kashmiri. It was they who had planned to carry out a deadly attack in India. However, the ISI pulled both Rana and Headley out and asked them to do work for the Lashkar-e-Tayiba as the outfit needed to undertake a spectacular attack. This was done since there was a rift within the Lashkar-e-Tayiba and many wanted to go fight alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan against the US. The ISI however did not want the Lashkar to engage in Afghanistan. Hence they felt that this attack would keep the cadres united.
While at first it was being suggested that Rana visited Kerala to under a reconnaissance, this can be debated. Rana was not trained like Headley to carry out such an operation.
While in Kerala, he told everyone that he was an immigration consultant. He may have attempted to set up fronts in Kerala so that a recruitment drive could be undertaken. In Kerala, Rana had even placed an advertisement in a local newspaper inviting visa seekers to both the United States and Canada. This however could have been a cover to get cadres from Kerala under one umbrella and then further the plan as thought out by Ilyas Kashmir and Headley.
The Kerala-Kashmir connect
The first non-Kashmir, non-Pakistan to join the terror ranks and fight against the Indian Army in Jammu and Kashmir was incidentally from Kerala.
In 2013, a court convicted 13 persons after they were found guilty of recruiting terrorists for camps in Kashmir. The probe showed that the main accused Nazeer and 12 others were aiding Pakistan based groups to recruit terrorists to fight in Kashmir.
In 2008, four persons from Kerala were killed in an encounter with the security forces. The NIA had said later on that for the first time did the Lashkar-e-Tayiba used Indians other than Kashmiris in a battle.
It was found that Kerala had 17 camps and had recruited 40 persons for operations in Jammu and Kashmir.
The Kerala connect to Kashmir does not end with Ilyas Kashmiri, Rana or the Lashkar-e-Tayiba. In 2021, the NIA investigated one Mohammad Ameen a resident of Malappuram in Kerala. He was accused of running propaganda channels for the Islamic State on various social media platforms. The probe found that he along with his associates were planning on undertaking Hijra to Jammu and Kashmir and then engaging in acts of terror.
Rana’s extradition
During Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s two-day visit to the United States, President Donald Trump said that his administration had approved the extradition of Rana.
Prior to this the Supreme Court had rejected Rana’s review which paved the way for his extradition.
Following the announcement made by Trump, the administration had to sign the order following which the extradition could have taken place in two days. A five-member team of the NIA is visiting the United States to oversee the extradition process.
However, the extradition may be delayed by a few weeks since Rana has filed an appeal in a US Appeals Court on humanitarian grounds.
Rana has been accused by the NIA of helping David Headley. It was Rana who prepared the travel documents for Headley who eventually carried out a reconnaissance of targets in Mumbai. On November 26 2008, ten terrorists of the Lashkar-e-Tayiba attacked various iconic places in the city in which 166 persons lost their lives.
Rana was however not convicted in the US for the Mumbai case. While he was convicted in a Denmark related case, he was released from jail during the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020 on humanitarian grounds. The NIA however objected to this stating that he is a wanted terrorist in India. This set off a long legal battle which the NIA finally won when the US Supreme Court rejected Rana’s appeal against his extradition to India.
