3 min readNew DelhiMay 6, 2026 09:17 AM IST
Tahawwur Rana, extradited from the US last year for his alleged role in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, underwent a hernia surgery at All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi Tuesday.
Rana, 65, who is lodged in Tihar Jail, was admitted on May 4 and operated upon the same morning. “After surgery, he is now recovering. The entire medical examination was conducted after obtaining permission from a Delhi court regarding his health condition,” a source said.
Before receiving a surgery date, he visited AIIMS Delhi five times in the last month, following which doctors scheduled the procedure. Records reviewed by The Indian Express show visits on March 31, followed by four more on April 6, April 7, April 20, and April 21.
Rana is currently lodged in Jail 2 at Delhi’s Tihar Jail, in a ward for high-risk prisoners. He is escorted to the hospital by the Delhi Police’s Nayayik Abhiraksha Vahini (NAV), with special security arrangements by the Delhi Police’s security division.
“Currently, the South district police has also deployed personnel outside Rana’s ward, in coordination with the NAV and the security division. NAV handles ferrying Tihar inmates to court or hospital,” a source said.
Rana, inmate number 1784, shares the less-crowded block with six other high-risk prisoners, including dreaded gangsters and alleged Indian Mujahideen operative Mohammed Ahmed Zarar Siddibappa, alias Yasin Bhatkal. “But each is in a separate cell, so there’s no interaction. The ward where he is being kept is separate. No prisoner from the other wards is allowed to enter,” said a source in Tihar Jail.
A close associate of 26/11 Lashkar-e-Toiba scout David Coleman Headley, Rana, was brought to India on April 10 last year after his extradition from the US. He is accused of aiding and abetting the reconnaissance carried out by Headley, with whom he went to school in Pakistan, for the 26/11 attacks and of participating in the conspiracy by providing crucial logistical support to the terrorists who attacked Mumbai.
