The Relentless Advocate

Senior Advocate Dayan Krishnan, India’s go-to extradition expert, leads the legal battle to bring 26/11 accused Tahawwur Rana to justice.

Over the past fifteen years, Dayan Krishnan has become one of India’s foremost criminal lawyers, his career marked by a devotion to detail, a gift for persuasion and a particular flair for the high-wire world of extradition law. The latter talent that will now be tested as he leads India’s prosecution against Tahawwur Rana, a close aide of 26/11 conspirator David Coleman Headley.

Rana’s arrival in Delhi, ferried on a chartered flight after a prolonged and bruising legal battle across American courts, is itself a testament to Krishnan’s persistence. The 64-year-old Pakistan-born Canadian had fought extradition fiercely, filing appeals at every level, from the District Court to the Supreme Court of the United States. Through it all, Krishnan remained a constant, shaping India’s arguments with patience and precision, rebutting claims of double jeopardy and persuading sceptical American judges that the crimes for which India sought Rana were distinct from those he had faced earlier.

For Krishnan, it is a continuation of work that began nearly fifteen years ago. Since 2010, he has been involved with the labyrinthine legal process surrounding the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. In 2011, as part of an Indian delegation, he travelled to Chicago to help interrogate David Headley, the American terrorist who mapped Mumbai’s landmarks for his Pakistani handlers. Krishnan’s association with the case deepened further in 2014, when he was appointed Special Public Prosecutor in the extradition matters of both Headley and Rana.

Yet 26/11 is only one chapter in a storied career. A graduate of India’s first national law school - he was part of its inaugural class in 1993 - Krishnan represents a new breed of Indian lawyers: formally trained, globally aware and at ease navigating both domestic and international legal terrains. After beginning his independent practice in 1999, he quickly made a name for himself, defending complex criminal cases and representing government agencies in some of India’s most watched trials. His résumé includes appearances in the 2001 Parliament attack trial, the 2012 Delhi gang-rape and murder case and the high-profile Cauvery water dispute.

His colleagues speak admiringly of his rare combination of being aggressive when needed but also deeply methodical, with the big picture as well as the minutiae always in his sights.

Krishnan’s style is defined by a meticulous preparation that borders on the obsessive. Colleagues recall how he would pore over hundreds of pages of documents late into the night, annotating them with tightly packed marginalia. In court, this preparation translates into fluid arguments, delivered with a quiet intensity that commands attention without theatricality. In the Rana extradition proceedings, it was Krishnan who dismantled the defence’s principal claim that extraditing Rana would violate protections against double jeopardy, or being tried twice for the same crime. Drawing on intricate aspects of international and American law, Krishnan argued that the charges against Rana in India concerned distinct acts involving different victims and different jurisdictions from the offenses for which he had earlier been convicted in the United States.

His adversary, Paul Garlick QC, a seasoned British extradition expert representing Rana, mounted a spirited defence. But by May 2023, a US Magistrate Judge had ruled in favor of India, accepting Krishnan’s arguments. Successive courts - the District Court, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and ultimately the Supreme Court - refused to overturn that decision. Rana’s final review plea was dismissed this April, clearing the way for his extradition.

For Krishnan, this was the culmination of a legal pursuit that began in 2010, when the 26/11 attacks were still fresh wounds on the national psyche. Even then, he had understood that justice, particularly across international boundaries, would require stamina as much as skill.

Krishnan leads a seasoned team from the National Investigation Agency (NIA), including Special Public Prosecutor Narender Mann, a veteran criminal lawyer known for his work with the Central Bureau of Investigation, and younger advocates like Sanjeevi Sheshadri and Sridhar Kale.

As Rana is brought before Indian courts, charged with assisting in one of the most horrific terrorist attacks in the country’s history, the legal process will be gruelling. But in Dayan Krishnan, the Indian state has found an advocate who has already proven, over the long, hard slog of international litigation, that he is not easily deterred.

A courtroom, after all, is just another battlefield for Krishnan where patience, preparation, and persistence win the day.