Dilemma over sending NIA team to quiz Rana

New Delhi is still undecided over sending a NIA team to the US to question Tahawwur Rana despite Washington promising access to the childhood friend of 26/11 terrorist David Headley. Shishir Gupta reports.From Pak army to 26/11

Updated on: Sep 5, 2011, 11:54:08 IST

Hindustan Times | By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

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New Delhi is still undecided over sending a National Investigation Agency (NIA) team to the US to question convicted Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorist Tahawwur Rana despite Washington promising access to the childhood friend of 26/11 terrorist Daood Gilani alias David Coleman Headley.

Rana is awaiting a sentence by a US court after being convicted for plotting a terrorist attack on Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, providing material support to a LeT group. Rana was acquitted on charges of abetting the Mumbai terror attack in 2008.

Government sources said that both US homeland secretary Janet Napolitano and secretary of state Hillary Clinton had assured the UPA government all help in getting access to Rana during their visit to India earlier this year.

Napolitano visited India last May for the homeland security dialogue and Clinton was in New Delhi in July for the bilateral strategic dialogue. As part of their promise, Washington sent case papers relating to Rana to the NIA on August 8, 2011.

While the UPA political leadership and the internal security establishment appear keen on sending an NIA team to meet Rana this month, the bureaucracy and the agency are not sure this is required as they believe that the Rana case papers have enough material evidence.

Home ministry officials claim that sending a team to the US would be a waste as convicted Rana would not talk and, as it is, the LeT terrorist has been acquitted of the 26/11 attack charges. Sources in Washington have confirmed that the NIA has sought no dates for meeting Rana.

However, internal security managers believe Rana could provide a wealth of evidence against Lashkar leaders like Hafiz Saeed, al Qaeda terrorist Illyas Kashmiri and others.

Despite Rana's acquittal in the 26/11 case, he could provide details which would help in the extradition of Headley to India.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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