New Delhi: “Diplomacy is the art of building bridges, but justice is the act of crossing them.” — Kofi Annan, Former UN Secretary-General.

The summer has set in early this year — the refrain in Delhi. On April 10, in the warm, hushed hours, a quiet moment unfolded at Palam Airport. A person of interest arrived from Washington, D.C. and was swiftly escorted to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) headquarters.

He appeared unremarkable — aging, bearded, unassuming — a stark contrast to the horror he helped orchestrate. Tahawwur Hussain Rana, a Pakistani-born Canadian, once a military doctor and later a businessman, now stands accused of abetting one of the darkest chapters in India’s modern history: the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks claimed numerous promising lives and left a nation still reeling from its wounds.

The wait for justice may have seemed endless, with little hope for accountability, but with this turn of events, the day of reckoning has finally arrived. For the first time since that fateful November, a key mastermind was brought to Indian soil to face the consequences. For India, this moment marks not just a procedural but an emblematic triumph. The nation’s resolute battle against cross-border terrorism turned a corner, sending forth a message of an emergent India: vigilant, persistent, and unyielding in its pursuit of truth.

And in this season, when Delhi’s heat blurs the lines between waiting and weariness, a different kind of fire has been lit—the slow-burning demand for justice.

Rana, a former Pakistani Army doctor turned immigration consultant in Chicago, was more than just a facilitator — he was a strategic enabler of Lashkar-e-Taiba’s murderous plot. His links to David Coleman Headley, the Pakistani-American operative who surveilled Mumbai’s landmarks before the attacks, are well-documented. While a U.S. court in 2013 convicted Rana of supporting terrorism in Denmark, India continued its legal and diplomatic push for his trial under Indian law for his active role in 26/11.

The assault on the soul of Mumbai........

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