Amit Shah holds meeting with Jaishankar, Doval

New Delhi: Union Home Minister Amit Shah held a meeting with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval on Wednesday, sources said.The meeting came against the backdrop of reports of the imminent extradition of Mumbai terror attack accused Tahawwur Hussain Rana from the US.The home minister held a meeting with the external affairs minister and the NSA. Director of Intelligence Bureau Tapan Deka and Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri were also present, the sources said without elaborating on the issues discussed at the meeting.

As the meeting was held amidst the reports of the imminent extradition of Rana to India from the United States, the issue is believed to have figured in the discussion, the sources said.Rana has exhausted all legal options available in the United States and is likely to be brought back to India very soon.A multi-agency team of the central government is already in the United States to bring the Pakistan-origin Canadian national to India to face trial in India the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks case.

Rana is expected to be brought to Delhi, where he will be initially in the custody of the National Investigation Agency, which will carry out the legal formalities, sources said. It is not immediately known whether Rana will be brought in a commercial aircraft or a chartered one.He was lodged at a metropolitan detention centre in Los Angeles. He is known to be associated with Pakistani-American terrorist David Coleman Headley, one of the main conspirators of the 26/11 attacks.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested Rana in Chicago a year after the attacks in October 2009 for providing support for an aborted plan to attack a newspaper in Copenhagen (Denmark) and providing material support to Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).He was convicted in 2011 in that case and sentenced to 14 years in jail. However, Rana was acquitted of charges of conspiracy to provide material support to the Mumbai terror attacks.His last-ditch effort to stop his extradition failed as the US Supreme Court denied his application, moving him closer to being handed over to the Indian authorities to face the law in the country.