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The mystery of the first AK-56 rifle police has recovered from Mumbai in 10 years

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Police seized the weapon from the house of a Dawood ‘gang member’, suspect it could be one the AK rifles that went missing after 1993 blasts.

Mumbai: The Thane Police are investigating the origin of an AK-56 assault rifle — seized from the house of an alleged member of the Dawood Ibrahim gang last week — and its possible links to the arms cache recovered after the 1993 Mumbai blasts.

The police had Saturday seized the weapon along with three magazines, 95 live rounds, two 9 mm pistols and 11 cartridges from the house of history-sheeter Naem Fahim Khan, in Mumbai’s western suburb of Goregaon.

Khan’s wife, Yasmeen, was arrested in this connection.

Currently lodged in the Thane jail, Khan was arrested in 2016 under the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) for allegedly plotting to kill Iqbal Attarwala, who was once a close aide of Dawood and gangster Chhota Shakeel.

The plot was allegedly hatched at the behest of Shakeel.

Police are now investigating the origin of the gun, looking at its manufacturing number.

“The seizure of the arms cache is significant because AK rifles are not easily available…we mostly come across country-made weaponry. We are still investigating,” Abhishek Trimukhe, deputy commissioner of police at the Thane crime branch, told ThePrint.

“Khan has established links with underworld don Chota Shakeel and used to work for him,” Trimukhe alleged.

Possible theories

Police are looking at a theory that the seized AK-56 rifle may be one of the three that were reported missing after the 1993 Mumbai blasts. A total of 71 AK rifles were recovered in Mumbai following the 1993 blasts, at a time when the Mumbai police did not have a single AK or any other assault rifle.

An AK-56 rifle was also recovered from actor Sanjay Dutt’s house for which he was convicted under the Arms Act. He claimed that the rifle was for self-protection as his family had received threats during the Mumbai riots sparked by the demolition of the Babri Masjid.

Police officers say it is possible that Shakeel gave the recovered AK-56 rifle to Khan in the late 1990s.

However, Trimukhe said the police are still investigating and have not come to any conclusion yet. “What we know is that the AK-56 rifle was very rusty when we recovered it, so it suggests that it must be very old and been stored there for some time now,” he said.

“We are looking at the manufacturing number and other details,” he added.

Past seizures of AK rifles

While the Mumbai Police had come across cases involving AKs during the 1980s and early 1990s when the underworld had a strong grip over Mumbai, its first major brush with an entire cache of AKs was in the aftermath of the 1993 serial blasts.

The police cracked the case and started recovering AK rifles within two days of the blasts. On 12 March, the day of the blasts, gangsters were driving towards the city’s civic body in south Mumbai near the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus in a car loaded with AKs and grenades. However, they fled in panic and abandoned the car near Worli as the bomb planted at Worli Century Bazar went off.

Prior to that, an AK-47 rifle is said to have been used in the infamous 1992 JJ shootout when members of the Dawood gang barged into the JJ Hospital and killed Shailesh Haldankar — suspected to be a member of the rival Arun Gawli gang — for killing Dawood Ibrahim’s brother-in-law Ibrahim Parkar.

In May 2006, there was a large arms seizure in the Aurangabad district where the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad seized 16 AK-47 assault rifles, 43 kg of RDX, 50 hand grenades and 3,000 live bullets from a vehicle.

AK-47 rifles were also used in the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai when 10 men, armed with weapons and ammunition, came to the city taking the sea route and spread to several prime locations. The Mumbai Police fought the gunmen with obsolete .303 rifles.

Over the years, the police have recovered AK rifles during operations against Naxalites, the most recent being in April this year when the Gadchiroli Police seized a cache of arms, including three AK-47s from the Naxals gunned down.

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