Notorious gangster Ayub Khan and his wife were sentenced to seven years in prison by a local court in Hyderabad on Tuesday, in connection with a fake passport case.
The duo was booked under relevant sections of the Indian Passport Act, 1967, in addition to sections 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) and 471 (using as genuine a forged document or electronic record) of the IPC.
Ayub Khan, also known as Ayub Pahelwan, is one of the most wanted criminals and gangsters in the city. He was earlier arrested in December 2016 by Hyderabad police in Mumbai with the help of airport immigration officials and Interpol.
Khan had a 'red corner' notice pending against him, which according to the Interpol, is served against offenders wanted on an international level.
History
Khan, who is in his late 40s, is said to have been born in the city's Fateh Darwaza area, where he grew up.
The police said that he started his criminal career at the age of 16. In 1990, he and his associates allegedly participated in communal riots in the limits of Kamathipura and Hussaini Alam police stations.
A rowdy sheet was opened against him on April 30, 1991.
"He had created panic in the minds of the general public and started extorting people at knife point. He and his associates were involved in about 75 cases (6 cases of murder, 8 cases of attempt to Murders, 5 cases under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, 9 cases under the Arms Act, 2 cases under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 2 case of dacoity, 2 case of robbery and 40 other cases)," the police said.
They further added that Khan and his gang primarily threatened businessmen using knives and firearms, and extorted money from them, before they branched out into illegal land grabbing activities in and around Hyderabad.
“No witness or complainant was daring enough to depose evidence against him. The witnesses turned hostile due to his brutal attitude,” the police said.
Khan is reported to have escaped from the police on several occasions, including one incident in 1992, when he was shot in the leg, but still managed to slip away.
In 2002, Khan and his gang members were arrested for killing an advocate, however, he came out on bail in 2005, before going into hiding and allegedly continuing operations.
In 2010, a Hyderabad court sentenced him to life for brutally stabbing another advocate to death, and also later trying to kill the advocate's brother, who was a crucial eye-witness in the case.
The police said that even this didn’t deter him, as he hatched a plan when he was in jail, and obtained a fake passport from the passport office in Hyderabad with false details regarding his parentage, marital status, age, and residence.
Khan fled to Dubai in 2014, using the fake passport, and began running a gold smuggling racket from there and had even visited Hyderabad twice before his arrest in Mumbai, investigators said.
The police stated that the investigation successfully linked the events and proved beyond doubt that the accused had conspired together and fabricated fake documents such as a voter ID card, driving license, false affidavits and submitted a passport application.