The TOI Correspondent from Washington: New Delhi is close to having Tahawwur Rana, a former Pakistani Army doctor and 26/11 Mumbai terrorist attack accused, brought to justice after US Supreme Court Associate Justice Elena Kagan rejected his emergency application on Thursday to stay his extradition to India.
Rana’s attorneys immediately bumped up the application to Chief Justice John Roberts, likely the last court of appeal, with little possibility of reprieve after President Trump personally assured his extradition during Prime Minister Modi‘s visit to Washington DC last month and the State Department signed off on handing him over to Indian authorities.
On Thursday, Rana played the religion and health card, citing possible religious persecution and torture in India on account of his Muslim faith, besides serious medical condition, to forestall the extradition, which he argued through attorneys would be a “de facto death sentence. ” But Justice Kagan, who serves as the Circuit Justice for the Ninth Circuit which had earlier upheld the extradition, rejected his “Emergency Application for Stay Pending Litigation of Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus.”
“Application…denied by Justice Kagan,” the US SC website said in a terse announcement, without elaborating.
Rana has fought the extradition for almost four years purportedly with help from the Pakistani establishment loath to give up one of their own because of the precedent it would set. But the state department has already signed off on handing him over to India, and New Delhi has already made arrangements to take him into custody and fly him back to face justice for one of the most egregious terrorist attacks on Indian soil that also claimed the lives of 26 foreign nationals, including six Americans.