AK-56 seizure: Thane Police gets custody of alleged aide of Dawood Ibrahim

Thane police with the seized AK-56 rifle on July 8. (Express Photo by Deepak Joshi)

A Thane court on Saturday remanded an alleged aide of fugitive gangster Dawood Ibrahim in police custody till July 17 in connection with the seizure of an AK-56 assault rifle from his Mumbai home earlier this month. Naeem Khan, who has been in jail since April 2016 for allegedly planning to kill a former gangster, was produced before the court by the Anti-Extortion Cell of the Thane Police. The court remanded Khan in police custody till July 17.

The AEC had seized the AK-56, apart from a pistol and ammunition, from his home in Mumbai’s Bangur Nagar area on July 6 following a tip-off. Khan’s wife, Yamsin, was arrested that day under sections of the Arms Act. The information about the rifle being stored in Khan’s house came after Thane’s AEC nabbed two alleged drug peddlers, Jahid Zali Shoukat Kashmiri (47) and Sanjay Shroff (47) on July 5, according to the police.

Police officials, at the time, had said that they wanted to probe if the seized rifle was part of the arms consignment that landed in Mumbai prior to the 1993 serial blasts.