Tahawwur Rana’s role in the 26/11 attacks was exposed by his high school friend from Pakistan and co-conspirator David Coleman Headley, sources in India’s security establishment said.

Headley, a US citizen born to an American mother and a Pakistani father, was arrested in October 2009 by the US authorities and sentenced to 35 years in prison for his involvement in the Mumbai attacks.

Testifying before a Chicago court, Headley had revealed that Rana had helped him set up a fake immigration office in Mumbai as cover for scouting terror targets, and provided logistical and financial support for the November 2008 Mumbai attacks.

“Rana allowed Headley to use his business as a front to establish a branch in Mumbai, called the Immigration Law Centre, which served as a cover for scouting potential targets,” a National Investigation Agency (NIA) official said.

“During Headley’s interrogation in the US, he revealed before Indian agencies that he had travelled to India five times between 2006 and 2008, using a five-year visa that Rana had helped him obtain, and conducted reconnaissance for the Mumbai attacks.”

A former doctor in the Pakistani army, Rana had moved to Canada in the 1990s and eventually become a naturalised citizen. He later shifted to the US, where he opened an immigration consultancy in Chicago.

According to the US department of justice, Headley had testified to attending five Lashkar-e-Toiba camps in Pakistan between 2002 and 2005.

Early in 2006, Headley was asked by the Lashkar to go to India for surveillance. Around mid-2006, Headley and two Lashkar operatives discussed the idea of setting up an immigration office in Mumbai as a cover for their mission.

Headley testified that he travelled to Chicago and told Rana about his assignment to identify potential targets in India. Rana promised support.

“Rana facilitated and funded Headley’s multiple reconnaissance trips to India between 2006 and 2008. During these trips Headley visited key sites that were later attacked, including the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, Chabad House and CST railway station,” the NIA official said.