An AK-56 Army assault rifle that was among the three rifles which had gone missing from the cache of arms and ammunition seized during the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts was on Saturday recovered by the Thane from the residence of an aide of Karachi-based Dawood Ibrahim.
The Anti- Extortion Cell (AEC) sleuths of the Thane police seized the AK-56 rifle during a raid conducted by them on the Goregaon residence of residence of Yasmin Naeem Khan (35) on Friday.
“We also recovered two 9mm pistol and 13 live cartridges, the gun’s three magazines and 95 live cartridges and other materials during the raid,” a senior AEC official said
The investigations have revealed that the seized AK-56 rifle was among three such deadly rifles that were reported missing after the Mumbai 1993 serial blasts.
The investigators had got a tip-off about the presence of AK-56 rifle in Yaseem Khan’s residence at Kranti Chawl in Bhagatsingh Nagar from two small-time drug-peddlers Zahid Jali Kashmiri(47) and Sanjay Bipin Shroff (46), whom the Thane AEC had arrested from Nagpada in south Mumbai on Thursday..
Yasim’s husband Naeem Khan had been arrested on April 20, 2016 by Mumbai Police under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) and is currently lodged in Thane prison as an under-trial. The charge that Naseem Khan faces is that he had, at the behind of Dawood’s right-hand man Chhota Rajan had murdered one Iqbal Anthrawala.
Following the recovery of Mumbai 1993 serial blasts –linked AK-56 rifle from her residence, the Thane police arrested Yasim Khan on Saturday. A local court remanded her in police custody till Monday. Yasim told the police that AK-56 rifle belonged to her husband.
The AEC, headed by yesteryear encounter specualist Pradeep Sharma, is expected to question Yasim as to why the banned weapons and other ammunitions were kept at her residence, as to how long in her house, as to who had brought them, and as to e whereabouts or fate of the other two missing AK-56s.
Ahead of his arrest in 2016, Naeem Khan had shifted the AK-56 rifle to a safe location. At that time, the police had recovered 5 pistols from his home.
However, barely a few months ago, Zahid Ali Kashmiri had returned the rifle to Khan’s wife Yasmin for safekeeping which has now been recovered by the Thane AEC.
The police are suspecting the recovered rifle was among three Ak-56 rifles that Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt’s friends Samir Hingora and Hanif Kadawala, who later +became co-accused, had bought in the run up to the March 12, 1993 serial blasts case
Sanjay Dutt had procured one AK-56 rifle from his friends for his self-defence in the aftermath of the bloody Mumbai communal carnage of December 1992-January 1993.
Sanjubabu, as the actor is popularly known as in Bollywood circles, was arrested for the first time on his arrival from Mauritius on April 19, 1993 for possessing prohibited Kalashnikov assault rifle and 9 mm pistol, was convicted under the Arms Act in 2006.
The conviction of Sanjay, who had initially been awarded six years’ sentence by a TADA court in 2006, was upheld by the Supreme Court on March 21, 2013. The apex court, however, reduced the sentence from six years to five years.
Sanjay was released from Pune’s Yerwada prison on February 25, 2016 earlier than the schedule, owing to what was described as 144-day remission granted to him by the jail administration as per the prison norms.