AK-56 seized from Dawood gang member’s house, wife arrested

An AK-56 rifle has been seized from the house of a Dawood Ibrahim gang member in Mumbai’s suburban Goregaon and his wife arrested, 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 yesterday,” a senior official of Thane Police said.

The Anti Extortion Cell (AEC) of Thane Police seized an AK-56 assault rifle, three magazines, a 9 mm pistol and 13 live cartridges from Khan’s house, the police official 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 Mumbai Crime Branch arrested Naim Khan 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 why the weapons and ammunition were stored at the house, the official said. She was produced before a court on Saturday in Thane which remanded her in police custody till July 11, he added.

(With inputs from agencies)