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Rana visited Kochi in November 2008

Kochi: Terror suspect Tahawwur Hussain Rana, 48, who along with David Coleman Headley was arrested by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) recently for allegedly plotting attacks in India and Denmark, visited Kochi in November 2008 with wife Samraz Akhtar on a ‘talent spotting’ mission.

Indian intelligence agencies have gathered clinching evidence of his activities in Kochi, where he stayed as ‘Tahawwur Hussain’ at the Taj Residency (since renamed Gateway) Hotel from the evening of November 16, 2008, till 2 p.m. on November 17.

According to sources, details of his passport, bearing number JV 533373, issued from Ottawa on March 3, 2006, and his address in Chicago were ascertained from the hotel records. From Kochi, he took off for Mumbai, they said.

A Pakistan-born Canadian national, Rana was running an immigration consultancy firm — First World Immigration services — in Chicago that he used as an alibi to recce Indian cities purportedly on a Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) assignment to cultivate sleeper cells in Kerala.

The security agencies have also unearthed a cover advertisement that he put out in a leading daily in the State on November 17 offering visas to the U.S. and Canada on a ‘limited time money back guarantee.’ It read: ‘Our Principal, World famous Immigration Consultant Dr. Rana from Chicago in your town’ and listed his tour dates in Delhi (November 14 and 15), Cochin (November 16 and 17), Ahmedabad (November 18 and 19) and Mumbai (November 20).’

“Although he interviewed a couple of visa-seekers from Ernakulam district, no one seemed to have been offered one. This angle is still being probed,” sources told The Hindu. Significantly, among the charges the FBI levelled against him was that he tapped the lacunae in the U.S. Immigration procedure to unlawfully bring people into the U.S.

Indian agencies, however, have not come across evidence of Headley visiting Kochi along with Rana. The Special Branch of the State Police hit upon names such as David Hurtley (a British national) while skimming through occupancy registers in a hotel in Kochi, but his passport details didn’t match with that of Headley. “The search, however, is far from over,” said an official.

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