This Article is From Nov 27, 2009

Tahawwur Rana's visit to Agra

Meerut, Agra, Hapur: Suspected Lashkar-e-Toiba (Let) operative Tahawwur Hussain Rana had come to India just days before the 26/11 attacks, apparently to meet family and see the Taj Mahal.

Rana and his doctor wife Samraz visited Agra last November - incidentally the same month when David Headley could have visited the city.

Now, the investigative agencies have been able to track down the places they went to and the people they met during that trip.

Rana and his wife were received by a relative at the Delhi airport on November 13 last year. They headed straight to Meerut to meet Samraz's aunt Suraiya Bano.

After a brief stay, the couple went to Hapur, Ghaziabad, to Samarz's second aunt Farzana Pervez's house.

Next morning, accompanied by Farzana and her young daughter Zoya Akbar, the couple drives to Agra in a Maruti Wagon R.

After reaching Agra they checked into a budget hotel, four km from the Taj Mahal.

The room was taken in the name of the school going child Zoya. Rana was cautious enough not to leave behind a paper trail.

On November 15, 2008, at the crack of dawn, all four check out of the hotel to go and see the Taj Mahal.

"We woke up in the morning and left to see the Taj Mahal. Then we left for Delhi," said Rana's relative Farzana Parvez.

Finally, Rana and Samraz were dropped off in Karol Bagh, Delhi. But Rana's relatives insist the couple's trip was not a recce for some terror plot.

"He is a very pious person and can never do something like this. He had told us that he had protested before the media against the Danish cartoonist. This is why the Americans are deliberately using this to trap him," said Suraiya Bano, one of Rana's relatives.

The National Investigating Agency (NIA) has already questioned Samraz's family and all the records from this hotel have already been seized as evidence.

But Rana's attempts to remain untraceable in Agra still continue to raise suspicion about the real motive of his visit.
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