AK-56 seized from Dawood gang member's house, wife arrested
An AK-56 rifle has been seized from the house of a member of Dawood Ibrahim gang in suburban Goregaon here, police said on Saturday.
"Yasmin Naim Khan (35), wife of Dawood Ibrahim gang member Naim Khan, was arrested following the raid on the couple's house on Friday," a senior official of Thane Police said.
Apart from an AK-56 assault rifle, three magazines, a 9 mm pistol and 13 live cartridges were seized from Khan's house by the Anti Extortion Cell (AEC) of Thane Police, he said.
The raid followed interrogation of two alleged drug peddlers, Jahid Zali Shoukat Kashmiri (47) and Sanjay Shroff (47), arrested by the Thane AEC from Nagpada in central Mumbai two days ago.
The assault rifle was lying at Khan's house for a long time, the official claimed.
The rifle was found wrapped in a newspaper from the year 1997.
AK-56 rifles were among the arms, ammunition and explosives smuggled into India by Dawood Ibrahim's men before the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts.
The AEC is also probing whether this rifle was from among the weapons brought in during the blasts conspiracy, the official said.
Naim Khan was arrested by the Mumbai Crime Branch under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) in 2016.
He and some others had allegedly planned to kill Iqbal Attarwala, a former gang member, on the instructions of fugitive gangster Chhota Shakeel, the official said.
They were arrested before the plan could be executed.
Naim Khan is currently lodged in Thane prison, awaiting trial.
AEC sleuths are questioning Yasmin Khan as to why the weapons and ammunition were stored at the house, the official said.
Arrested under the Arms Act, she was today produced before a court in Thane which remanded her in police custody till July 11, he added.