It's a good thing: Ex-home minister Sushilkumar Shinde on Tahawwur Rana's extradition

Mumbai: Senior Congress leader and former Union home minister Sushilkumar Shinde on Thursday welcomed the extradition of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks case accused Tahawwur Hussain Rana.

Shinde was the home minister in 2012, when Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone terrorist captured alive from the Pakistani group that carried out the terror attack, was hanged to death in Pune's Yerawada Jail.

Rana, 64, is being brought to India after his last-ditch attempt to evade extradition failed as the US Supreme Court justices rejected his application.

"It's a good thing," Shinde told reporters in Ahmedabad, where he attended the AICC session.

Rana is likely to be lodged in a high-security ward in Tihar jail in New Delhi when he reaches India.

He 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.

Meanwhile, NCP (SP) Maharashtra president and former state home minister Jayant Patil told a news agency that Rana's extradition will help in exposing Pakistan's role as a terror state and unravel names of all the masterminds of the 26/11 terror attacks.

Patil said a proper trial should be conducted.

On November 26, 2008, a group of 10 Pakistani terrorists went on a rampage, carrying out a coordinated attack on a railway station, two luxury hotels and a Jewish centre, after they sneaked into India's financial capital using the sea route in the Arabian Sea.

As many as 166 persons were killed in the nearly 60-hour terror assault.