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US President Donald Trump had last month announced that his administration has approved the extradition of “very evil” Tahawwur Rana “to face justice in India”.
Tahawwur Rana is seeking a stay of his extradition to India after the US Supreme Court rejected his emergency bid. (File photo)
Pakistani-origin Canadian businessman, Tahawwur Hussain Rana, is seeking a stay of his extradition to India after the Supreme Court of United States rejected his emergency bid. Rana, a former Pakistani Army doctor, is wanted in India for his role in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.
US President Donald Trump had last month announced that his administration has approved the extradition of “very evil” Tahawwur Rana “to face justice in India”.
What You Must Know About Tahawwur Rana: Top Points
• Tahawwur sun is currently lodged in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles.
• He is known to be associated with Pakistani-American terrorist David Coleman Headley, one of the main conspirators of the 26/11 terror attacks. Headley had testified against Rana.
• Tahawwur Rana is also accused of having links with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). He was reportedly aware of the Mumbai terror strike and was in contact with the terrorist groups and their leaders in Pakistan.
• Rana was tried in a US district court on charges of supporting the terror group that carried out the Mumbai attacks.
• In June 2011, the US court, however, acquitted Rana of conspiring to provide material support to terrorism related to the attacks in India. But Rana was convicted of providing material support to the terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and helping a terror plot in Denmark.
• After Rana served seven years in jail for those convictions and upon his compassionate release, India issued a request for his extradition to try him for his link with the Mumbai attacks.
• In May 2023, the US Supreme Court approved Rana’s extradition to India. The process was expedited after newly-confirmed Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi met US President Donald Trump last month.
• He had submitted an “Emergency Application For Stay Pending Litigation of Petition For Writ of Habeas Corpus” on February 27. A note dated March 6 on the Supreme Court website said that “Application…denied by Elena Kagan, Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court”.
• Rana has now renewed his “Emergency Application for Stay Pending Litigation of Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus” previously addressed to Justice Kagan, and requests that the renewed application be directed to Chief Justice Roberts,” according to the submission by Rana’s lawyers on Thursday posted on the court’s website.
• In his emergency application, Rana had sought a stay of his extradition and surrender to India. He argued that his extradition to India violates United States law and the United Nations Convention Against Torture “because there are substantial grounds for believing that, if extradited to India, the petitioner will be in danger of being subjected to torture.”
• “The likelihood of torture in this case is even higher though as petitioner faces acute risk as a Muslim of Pakistani origin charged in the Mumbai attacks,” the application said.
• The application also said that his “severe medical conditions” render extradition to Indian detention facilities a “de facto” death sentence in this case.
• It cited medical records from July 2024 that confirm Rana has multiple “acute and life-threatening diagnoses”, including multiple documented heart attacks, Parkinson’s disease with cognitive decline, a mass suggestive of bladder cancer, stage 3 chronic kidney disease, and a history of chronic asthma, and multiple Covid-19 infections.
