Extradition of 26/11 accused Tahawwur Rana big success of Modi govt: Shah

Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Wednesday asserted that the extradition of 26/11 Mumbai terror attack key accused Tahawwur Hussain Rana is a big success of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi government.

Rana is expected to arrive in India from the United States very soon after the Supreme Court of that country denied his application against the decision to extradite him to India.

"Tahawwur Rana's extradition is a big success of Prime Minister Modi's diplomacy," Shah said at the 'News18 Rising Bharat Summit'.

The home minister said the Modi government's effort is to bring to justice those who attack India's honour, land and people.

"He will be brought here to face trial and punishment. It is a big success of the Modi government," he said.

Without taking its name, Shah also took a dig at the Congress, saying those who were at the helm at the time of the Mumbai terror attack in 2008 could not bring Rana to India to face the trial.

Rana, a Pakistani-origin Canadian national, was a key accused in the Mumbai terror attacks that left 166 people dead.

Rana has exhausted all legal options available in the United States and is likely to be brought back to India very soon.

A multi-agency team of the central government is already in the United States to bring him to India to face trial in India the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks case.

Rana is expected to be brought to Delhi, where he will be initially in the custody of the National Investigation Agency (NIA), which will carry out the legal formalities, sources said.

He was lodged at a metropolitan detention centre in Los Angeles.

Rana is known to be associated with Pakistani-American terrorist David Coleman Headley, one of the main conspirators of the 26/11 attacks.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested Rana in Chicago a year after the attacks in October 2009 for providing support for an aborted plan to attack a newspaper in Copenhagen (Denmark) and providing material support to Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

He was convicted in 2011 in that case and sentenced to 14 years in jail. However, Rana was acquitted of charges of conspiracy to provide material support to the Mumbai terror attacks.

His last-ditch effort to stop his extradition failed as the US Supreme Court denied his application, moving him closer to being handed over to the Indian authorities to face the law in the country.