PySW | simple Smith-Waterman algorithm implementation | Learning library

I am specifying the folder to extract but still it seems trying to create a folder in the root directory. is this behavior expected?

Yes. The path provided is just a "current directory", it's not a "jail". The documentation even specifically warns about it:

It is possible that files are created outside of path, e.g. members that have absolute filenames starting with "/" or filenames with two dots "..".

I can extract this tar file fine in file manager. is there a way to handle this in python?

Use extractfile to get a pseudo-file handle on the contents of the archived file, then copy that wherever you want.