Mumbai, Apr 10 (PTI) Senior Congress leader and former Union home minister Sushilkumar Shinde and the other opposition parties on Thursday welcomed the extradition of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks case accused Tahawwur Hussain Rana.

“It’s a good thing,” Shinde told reporters in Ahmedabad, where he attended the AICC session.

Shinde was the Union home minister in the Congress-led UPA government 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. He is expected to reach New Delhi on Thursday.

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

Rana 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.

NCP (SP) Maharashtra president and former state home minister Jayant Patil told PTI 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.

Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Priyanka Chaturvedi said Rana’s extradition is a step towards closure and justice for the families of the terror attack and Mumbai city.

“As 26/11 accused Tahawwur Rana is extradited from US to India, after a 16 year fight to bring him back, as a Mumbaikar i feel it is a step towards closure and justice for the families of the terror attack and for my beloved city,” she said in a post on X on Wednesday night.

“Now for David Headley, Hafiz Saeed to be dragged back here and face their punishment,” Chaturvedi added.

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. PTI MR PR GK