US court rejects Tahawwur Rana's last plea against extradition to India

New York: The US Supreme Court rejected an application by the accused in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack to stay his extradition to India.

Tahawwur Rana, a Canadian citizen of Pakistani origin, is getting closer to be handed over to India to face justice, NDTV reported.

India earlier said that Pakistan-based Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba carried out the three-day attacks on hotels, a train station and a Jewish center in Mumbai killing 166 people on November 26, 2008.

Convicted in 2011 and later sentenced to 13 years in prison, Tahawwur Rana, based in Chicago, is currently lodged in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles.

The 64-year-old was reportedly associated with one of the main conspirators of the 26/11 attacks, David Coleman Headley.

Headley, a Pakistani-American terrorist, who posed as an employee with Rana's immigration consultancy, conducted a recce of Mumbai before the attacks.

Rana was convicted in the US of conspiracy to provide material support to the terrorist plot in Denmark and also of facilitating material support to Lashker-e-Taiba involved in the Mumbai attacks.

Rana submitted on February 27 an ‘Emergency Application For Stay Pending Litigation of Petition For Writ of Habeas Corpus’ at the Supreme Court.

Elena Kagan, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the US and Circuit Justice for the Ninth Circuit earlier last month denied the application.

However, Rana approached the court renewing his application seeking to direct it to Chief Justice Roberts.

However, a notice on the Supreme Court website reportedly said today that ‘Application denied by the Court.’

President Donald Trump, during a joint press conference with PM Modi in the White House in February this year, said that his administration approved the extradition of ‘very evil’ Rana ‘to face justice in India’.