A week after Mumbai terror attacks accused Tahawwur Rana was extradited to India, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on Thursday said that the reputation of Pakistan as the epicentre of global terrorism will not diminish, despite the country trying very hard to change.
The MEA said that the extradition of Rana served as a reminder to Islamabad that it needs to bring to justice the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks whom the country continues to shield.
“Pakistan may try very hard but its reputation as the epicentre of global terrorism will not diminish. The extradition of Rana serves as a reminder to Pakistan that it needs to bring to justice other perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks whom it continues to shield,” MEA official spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said during a weekly briefing on Thursday.
Tahawwur Rana, an accused in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, was brought to India in a special plane last Thursday after he exhausted his legal options in the US.
Rana was brought to the court in a cavalcade, including a jailman, an armoured SWAT vehicle and an ambulance. He was produced before Special NIA judge Chander Jit Singh. Senior advocate Dayan Krishnan and Special Public Prosecutor Narender Mann represented the NIA, while advocate Piyush Sachdeva from the Delhi Legal Services Authority represented Rana.
US President Donald Trump in February while meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced in a joint press conference that Tahawwur Rana would face justice in India.
Rana, a Pakistan-born Canadian national, is an associate of Pakistani-American terrorist David Coleman Headley, who was one of the key conspirators of the November 26 attacks in Mumbai in 2008. He was arrested in 2009, and his trial began in the US 2018. It was in 2020 that India formally initiated the process to get him extradited from the US. Rana will be lodged in Delhi’s Tihar Jail.
