A day after one of the key co-conspirators of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, Tahawwur Hussain Rana was extradited to India, the National Investigation Agency on Friday commenced his interrogation to uncover his role in the deadly plot and gather critical intelligence on the wider terror network.
New Delhi:A day after one of the key co-conspirators of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, Tahawwur Hussain Rana was extradited to India, the National Investigation Agency on Friday commenced his interrogation to uncover his role in the deadly plot and gather critical intelligence on the wider terror network. The NIA sleuths began grilling Rana about his ties with co-conspirators David Coleman Headley and Abu Jundal. Meanwhile, security around the NIA office has been beefed up as Rana is currently kept in custody there. The Delhi police and the CRPF personnel are guarding the outer periphery of NIA headquarters.
Rana's confrontation with Jundal, the only other 26/11 plotter in Indian custody, is crucial to unravelling the broader plot and filling in key gaps to help security agencies connect the missing dots. Rana will also be taken to multiple locations to help retrace the sequence of events from the 2008 terror attacks.
Sources revealed that eight other agencies, including the Military Intelligence and the Mumbai police, will also interrogate Rana. Investigators will also probe Rana's sources of funding, his links to both active and dormant sleeper cells and the identities of his associates involved in the network.
Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis said his government will provide every possible assistance to the NIA. "Mumbai police will extend all cooperation to the NIA and if we need any update on the probe, we will seek it from the NIA. The NIA will decide where to take him,” Fadnavis said.
Hours after securing Rana’s 18-day custody from the Patiala House court early on Friday, he was taken to the highly secured 14x14 cell of the NIA headquarters at the CGO Complex, where a team of investigators led by deputy inspector-general Jaya Roy, who is also the chief investigating officer, questioned him for several hours with intermittent breaks.
In light of the sensitive nature of the investigation, stringent precautions, including round-the-clock surveillance, have been put in place to eliminate any possibility of self-harm. The interrogation revolved around Rana’s nexus with the Pakistan Army-ISI syndicate and their terror proxy Lashkar-e-Tayyaba that orchestrated the deadliest terror attack on Indian soil, targeting the financial hub of the country.
"Rana will remain in NIA custody till April 28, during which time the agency will question him in detail in order to unravel the complete conspiracy behind the deadly 2008 attacks, in which a total of 166 persons were killed and over 238 injured," the NIA said in a statement released at 2.09 am on Friday. The agency issued the statement minutes after it secured Rana’s remand for custodial interrogation after he was extradited to India from the US on Thursday evening.
In its remand order, the judge directed the NIA to conduct a medical examination of Rana every 24 hours and allow him to meet his lawyer every alternate day. The judge allowed Rana to use only a "soft-tip pen" and meet his lawyer in the presence of the NIA officials, who will be out of an audible distance.
During the arguments, the NIA said Rana's custody was required to piece together the full scope of the conspiracy.
During the first round of integration, the NIA sleuths focused on key questions about Rana's exact role in the 26/11 attacks and his whereabouts on November 26, 2008. He was also questioned about the intent behind the specific locations he visited during the period.
Rana held a one-year Indian business visa and his wife, Samraz Rana Akhtar, held a five-year Indian tourist visa. Through his trips in India, he allegedly identified targets in Mumbai and helped plan attacks on the National Defence College in New Delhi and Chabad House in Mumbai.
Apart from Delhi and Mumbai, Rana, along with his wife, travelled extensively to Hapur (Uttar Pradesh), Agra, Kochi and Ahmedabad between November 13 and November 21, 2008. Apart from staying in the target location, Taj Hotel, Mumbai, the couple was also staying at a particular hotel in Ahmedabad. He also passed sensitive GPS coordinates of targets identified by Headley. Rana also had plans to target the Kumbh Mela in Haridwar and had carried out reconnaissance at the Pushkar Mela in Rajasthan.
Once the initial interrogation and confrontation with the available evidence is complete, the NIA sleuths would take him to the aforementioned cities to reconstruct the terror conspiracy.
Rana, 64, a Pakistani-origin Canadian businessman who is a close associate of Headley (a US citizen), is also being quizzed on his suspected links with the officials of Pakistan's spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence and his exact role behind the attack, the sources said.
Rana is charged with numerous offences, including conspiracy, murder, commission of a terrorist act, and forgery. It may be recalled that while Headley had reconnoitred the targets in Mumbai ahead of the serial attacks, Jundal (currently lodged in a Mumbai prison) had directed the 10-member Pakistani group of terrorists to orchestrate the hits at various Mumbai installations to create mayhem.
Headley had pleaded guilty to 12 terrorism charges in 2010 and cooperated with US authorities, testifying at Rana’s trial, during which he had detailed how the former Pakistani Army doctor facilitated his surveillance missions in India and Denmark under the guise of expanding First World Immigration Services, the business front Rana owned.
Evidence in the possession of the agencies indicates that Rana knowingly facilitated Headley’s operations, sanctioning the opening of a front in Mumbai, assisting with documentation and the visa process and backing Headley's covert trip to Denmark.
Sayyed Zabiuddin Ansari, alias Abu Jundal, an LeT operative, who had trained the 10-member team of Pakistan terrorists that hit Mumbai, had trained LeT ultras in Hindi and had also directed them during the 60-hour siege of the Maharashtra capital from command and control centre in Karachi where ISI operatives and accused in the case Sajid Mir and Major Iqbal were also present. The Pakistani agencies had later dismantled the centre after the nefarious operation culminated in the liquidation of nine terrorists and the lone surviving ultra Mohammad Ajmal Kasab landing in Mumbai police’s custody. Kasab was later hanged to death following conviction in the case on November 21, 2012.
Jundal, deported from Saudi Arabia in 2012, is currently undergoing life imprisonment in a MCOCA (Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act) in the 2006 Aurangabad arms haul case. Jundal and 11 others in the case were pronounced guilty of conspiracy to create terror in the minds of people and to eliminate public leaders like the then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi and Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Pravin Togadia.
Jundal, a top LeT operative hailing from Mumbai, was convicted in the case for conspiring to organise terrorist activities in various parts of the country by recruiting Muslim youths for Jihad.
The NIA probe also seeks to uncover the roles of senior functionaries of terror groups LeT and Harkat-ul Jihadi Islami (HuJI), Hafiz Muhammad Saeed alias Tayyaji, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, Sajjid Majid alias Wasi, Illyas Kashmiri and Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed, alias Major Abdurrehman alias Pasha.
