These 2 Officers Are Leading Anti-Terror Probe Against Tahawwur Rana

As the interrogation of recently-extradited Mumbai terror attacks mastermind Tahawwur Rana began, two police officers Jaya Roy and Ashish Batra led the charge.

The two senior officers, who also played an instrumental role in Rana's extradition from the US 16 years after the Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people, are leading a 12-member National Investigation Agency (NIA) team that will investigate the case.

Ms Roy is a 2011 batch Indian Police Service (IPS) officer of the Jharkhand cadre and is currently serving as the Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of the NIA. Born on April 22, 1979 in West Bengal, she passed the UPSC Civil Services exam in 2011 after completing her MBBS. The same year, she was inducted into he Jharkhand Police ranks.

She has been on Central deputation since 2019 when she was appointed the Superintendent of Police (SP) of NIA. But perhaps the most famed achievement of her career is her team's crackdown on cyber criminals in Jharkhand's Jamtara, the revelations of which inspired a web series.

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Mr Batra is a 1997 batch IPS officer of Jharkhand cadre, is currently serving as Inspector General (IG) in the NIA. He was deputed to the agency in 2019 for a tenure of five years, which was extended by two years by the Union Home Ministry. He led the anti-insurgency unit Jharkhand Jaguar in 2018.

Rana, a 64-year-old Pakistani-origin Canadian businessman, was extradited to India from the US on Thursday and subsequently sent to NIA custody for 18 days.

His investigation will aim to uncover the "deeper layers of the conspiracy", after the probe agency told a Delhi court it suspects he had plans to target other Indian cities as well with similar large-scale strikes.

Rana has to be confronted with a lot of evidence and his statements would lead to "additional discoveries", the NIA submitted. The agency further told the court it needed to investigate his links with other terrorists and those accused in the Mumbai attack case, Rana, who is a close associate of 26/11 main conspirator David Coleman Headley alias Daood Gilani, a US citizen, is accused of conspiring with the latter and operatives of designated terrorist organisations Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Harkat-ul-Jihadi Islami (HUJI) along with other Pakistan-based co-conspirators, to carry out the 2008 attacks across 10 locations of Mumbai.

Rana is charged with numerous offenses, including conspiracy, murder, commission of a terrorist act, and forgery in the country.