AFP, New Delhi

Indian authorities are readying for the extradition from the United States of a man that New Delhi accuses of helping plan the 2008 Mumbai siege that killed 166 people.

Tahawwur Hussain Rana, 64, a Canadian citizen born in Pakistan, is due to be extradited “shortly” to face trial, Indian media said, reporting that New Delhi had sent a multi-agency team of security officials to collect him.

India accuses him of being a member of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) group, designated by the United Nations as a terrorist organisation, and of aiding planning the attacks.

US President Donald Trump announced in February that Washington would extradite Rana, whom he called “one of the very evil people in the world”.

The US SC this month rejected his bid to remain in the United States, where he is serving a sentence for a planning role in another LeT-linked attack.

New Delhi blames the LeT group -- as well as intelligence officials from New Delhi’s arch-enemy Pakistan -- for the Mumbai attacks in November 2008, when 10 Islamist gunmen carried out a multi-day slaughter in the country’s financial capital.

India accuses Rana of helping his longterm friend, David Coleman Headley, who was sentenced by a US court in 2013 to 35 years in prison after pleading guilty to aiding LeT militants, including by scouting target locations in Mumbai.

Rana, a former military medic who served in Pakistan’s army, emigrated to Canada in 1997, before moving to the US and setting up businesses in Chicago. He was arrested by US police in 2009.

A US court in 2013 acquitted Rana of conspiracy to provide material support to the Mumbai attacks. But the same court convicted him of backing LeT to provide material support to a plot to commit murder in Denmark.