BJP and Congress on Thursday traded charges on the issue of Tahawwur Rana’s extradition to India with both the parties taking credit for it.  The ruling party said extradition became possible due to zero tolerance policy towards terrorism under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.  However, the main opposition party said it was due to “mature, consistent and strategic diplomacy” that begun under the UPA.

Mumbai attack accused Tahawwur Rana’s extradition reflects “new India’s” zero-tolerance resolve towards terrorism under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the BJP said while accusing the Congress of being soft on terror for “vote-bank politics”.

Addressing a press conference at the BJP headquarters, national spokesperson Shehzad Poonawalla said Rana’s extradition was a “big achievement” of the Modi government and its security agencies.

It is also a tribute to the security personnel who made the supreme sacrifice while fighting Pakistan-sponsored terrorists and a “big step” towards rendering justice to more than 160 people, including those from the US, Israel, France, Germany, Italy and other countries, killed in the attack, he said.

“This extradition is not an ordinary extradition. This is a reflection of new India’s resolve which Prime Minister Narendra Modi had described in 2019, saying that if anyone dared to attack India’s unity, integrity, respect and its innocent people, the new India would bring such terrorists to justice,” Poonawalla said.

The BJP spokesperson said Rana was being brought back to make him face justice due to a “sea change” in the “attitude and mindset” of the government under Modi towards terrorism and terror attacks.

“Earlier, especially between 2004-14 (when the Congress-led UPA was at the helm), there was not a single month when there was no major terror attack in some major city of India,” he said.

The erstwhile government remained a mute spectator to terror attack incidents and did not take “concrete steps” against such terrorists and the sponsors of terrorism in India, he charged without naming the Congress.

Poonwalla said such major terror attacks had “almost stopped” due to the Modi government’s policy of zero tolerance towards terrorism. “Earlier, there used to be a soft corner and soft approach towards terrorism in the name of vote bank,” he said.

Congress leader and former Home Minister P Chidambaram said the Modi government did not initiate the extradition process, instead it benefited from the “mature, consistent and strategic diplomacy” that begun under the UPA.

He said the government did not secure any breakthrough to make the extradition possible, nor is it the result of any grandstanding. Chidambaram added that it was a testament to what the Indian state can achieve when diplomacy, law enforcement and international cooperation are pursued sincerely and without any kind of chest-thumping. “While the Modi government is rushing to take credit for this development, the truth is far from their spin,” Chidambaram said in a statement.

This extradition is the culmination of a decade-and-a-half of painstaking diplomatic, legal and intelligence efforts which were initiated, led, and sustained by the UPA government in close coordination with the United States, he said.

The coursework, Chidambaram said, began on November 11, 2009, when the NIA registered a case in New Delhi against David Coleman Headley (US citizen), Tahawwur Rana (Canadian citizen), and others involved in the 26/11 conspiracy, he said.

“That very month, Canada’s Foreign Minister confirmed collaboration with Indian agencies, thanks to UPA’s effective foreign policy. The FBI had arrested Rana in Chicago in 2009 for supporting a failed LeT plot in Copenhagen,” said Chidambaram, who was the Union home minister from November 2008 to July 2012. “Even though Rana was acquitted by a US court of direct involvement in the 26/11 attack in June 2011, he was convicted for other terrorism-related offences and sentenced to 14 years in prison. The UPA government publicly expressed its disappointment over his acquittal and kept diplomatic pressure alive,” Chidambaram said. Despite legal setbacks, the UPA government persisted through institutional diplomacy and legal mechanisms, he asserted.

A three-member NIA team interrogated Headley in the US before the end of 2011, based on mutual legal cooperation frameworks under the MLAT, he said in a statement released by the Congress.

Chidambaram further said the US government transferred crucial evidence to India, which became part of the NIA’s chargesheet filed in December 2011 against nine accused, including Rana.

“The Special NIA court in Delhi issued non-bailable warrants, and Interpol Red Notices were secured for absconding accused. This was not a media stunt but quiet, determined legal diplomacy. “In 2012, External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid and Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai took up the matter of Headley’s and Rana’s extradition with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Under Secretary Wendy Sherman,” he said.

By January 2013, Headley was sentenced to 35 years and Rana’s sentencing in the US also took place, the Congress leader said. “India’s demand for Headley’s extradition was reiterated firmly, even as the UPA government expressed its disappointment at the sentence. Then Ambassador to the US Nirupama Rao also pursued the matter consistently,” he said.

Chidambaram asserted that this was a textbook example of how sensitive issues of international justice should be handled through diplomacy.

“Even after the change in government in 2014, it was the institutional efforts already in motion that kept the case alive. In 2015, Headley agreed to turn approver in the 26/11 case,” he said.

In 2016, a Mumbai court pardoned him on the condition of full cooperation, which helped the case against Zabiuddin Ansari (Abu Jundal), he said.

A team visited the US in December 2018 to resolve legal hurdles and again in January 2019 was told that Rana must serve his full sentence in the US, Chidambaram said.  “His release date was set for 2023, accounting for time served. These are not ‘strong leader’ moments, but are the slow wheels of justice, pushed forward by years of hard work. In June 2020, after Rana was released on health grounds, the Indian government requested his arrest,” he noted.