When will Tahawwur Rana land in Delhi today? How Indian agencies plan to grill 26/11 Mumbai attacks accused

Tahawwur Hussain Rana, 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks co-conspirator, who is being brought to India in a special flight is expected to land around 12 noon on Thursday and is likely to be lodged in Tihar Jail in New Delhi.

Security has been stepped up outside Delhi’s Patiala House Court where Tahawwur Rana is likely to be produced on Thursday following his extradition from the US, an official told news agency PTI.

Personnel from paramilitary forces and the Delhi Police have been deployed outside the court, and a thorough physical frisking and checking of visitors is being carried out to avoid any untoward incident, he said.

Tihar Jail officials said all preparations have been made to lodge Tahawwur Rana in a high-security prison ward and they were waiting for court orders.

Indian authorities have been preparing for a long interrogation with intense coordination, The Economic Times reported.

Top officials — including Union home minister Amit Shah, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and external affairs minister S Jaishankar — met on Wednesday evening to finalise a tight security and interrogation plan for Rana’s arrival, the report added.

Tahawwur Rana’s remand may be conducted in-camera, owing to security concerns and the high-profile nature of the case.

“He has already been probed extensively, and cracking him will not be an easy task. He would know where to mislead us and create smokescreens. This will be time-consuming,” The Times of India quoted a senior official as saying.

Rana is set to be questioned by a specially formed team that includes officers from the NIA, two intelligence agencies, and forensic psychologists trained in counterterrorism and criminology. At the heart of their mission is a singular goal: to finally expose the masterminds and institutional networks that orchestrated the 26/11 attacks from across the border, the ET report added.

His return to India became official on Tuesday evening in Los Angeles, after the US Supreme Court turned down his final appeal against extradition. Soon after, the US Bureau of Prisons updated his status—his register number 22829-424 now marked as “Not in BOP custody as of 04/08/2025.”

Report claimed that it was DIG (NIA) Jaya Roy who signed the surrender warrant that cleared the decks for his extradition. The Indian team escorting him left LA early Wednesday morning, with a short stopover en route to Delhi.

Rana’s extradition didn’t come easy—it was only possible after India gave the US firm assurances about his safety, legal rights, and prison conditions that meet international human rights standards.

What India wants to know

Now back on Indian soil, Indian agencies would interrogate Rana to uncover the full web of connections between Lashkar-e-Taiba, Pakistan’s intelligence network, and several key players who have remained out of reach for years.

Investigators are hoping he can shed light on the roles of top LeT leaders like Hafiz Saeed, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, Sajid Mir, and HuJI’s Illyas Kashmiri—men still at large, and widely believed to be under the protection of the Pakistani establishment.

Who is Tahawwur Rana?

Tahawwur Rana, 64, is a Pakistan-born Canadian national and close associate of one of the main conspirators of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks David Coleman Headley alias Daood Gilani, a US citizen.

Rana is being brought to India after his last-ditch attempt to evade extradition failed as the US Supreme Court justices rejected his application.

Special public prosecutor appointed

The Centre has appointed a special public prosecutor to conduct a trial in the case related to Tahawwur Rana.

In a late-night notification, the Union home ministry said advocate Narender Mann will be the special public prosecutor for conducting trial and other matters related to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) case RC-04/2009/NIA/DLI (Mumbai attacks) for three years.

“In exercise of the powers conferred by sub-section (1) of section 15 of the National Investigation Agency Act, 2008 (34 of 2008), read with sub-section (8) of section 18 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (BNSS), the central government hereby appoints Narender Mann, advocate as special public prosecutor for conducting trial and other matters related to NIA case RC-04/2009/NIA/DLI on behalf of the National Investigation Agency before the NIA Special Courts at Delhi and Appellate Courts, for a period of three years from the date of publication of this notification or till the completion of trial of the said case, whichever is earlier,” the notification said.