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Hyderabad police question Nasir's wife

Syed Amin Jafri in Hyderabad | September 14, 2003 16:57 IST

Rukhia Begum, wife of Mumbai twin blasts suspect Abdul Rehman Aydeed alias Nasir, who was killed in an encounter with Mumbai Police two days ago, was questioned and her house searched in Hyderabad by counterintelligence and task force personnel.

The team also searched the house of Rukhia's parents, where she is presently staying, and questioned her on Saturday night, police sources said.

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No incriminating material, however, was found in the house, the sources said.

A resident of Mumbai, Nasir married Rukhia in 1997. Rukhia was the daughter of Abeed Ahmed Ali Refai, Nasir's maternal uncle.

He took his wife to Mumbai where she lived for two years. Subsequently, Rukhia was taken to Dubai in 1999. Within three months, Nasir sent her back to Hyderabad to stay with her parents. Nasir used to visit her regularly. The couple have twin daughters. Rukhia, now aged 23 years, is said to be pregnant again.

Nasir is learnt to have spent four days with his family in Hyderabad two months before the blasts, the sources said.

He rented a house in Barkas Salalah area of the city. After he left for Mumbai, his wife locked the house and shifted back to her father's house at Sher Gate locality in King Kothi area of the city.

"He was not a Hyderabadi, but a Hyderabadi damaad (son-in-law)," a senior police officer rediff.com

Not only Nasir (aged 36 years) but also his father Syed Ali Yamani (60), who hailed from Yemen and settled in Mumbai, was also married to a Hyderabadi woman from Barkas, a locality inhabited by people of Arab descent in the Old City.

Hyderabad Police, who interrogated Nasir's wife, father-in-law and other relatives, said that that Nasir had visited Hyderabad more than five times in the last one year.

According to a senior official, the investigations showed that Nasir's father, Syed Ali Yamani, a national of North Yemen, had migrated to Mumbai in 1960.  Soon after, Syed Ali Yamani married a Hyderabadi woman from Barkas area and went back to Mumbai.

The family lived in Crawford Market area of Mumbai. Nasir has four brothers and three sisters. Nasir studied in a neighbourhood school. Later, his family shifted to Ghatkopar.

A college dropout, Nasir went to Dubai in 1996. He worked as a clerk in Dubai municipality for sometime.

The police suspect that during his stay in Dubai, he was roped in by one of the ISI-sponsored terrorist outfits, Lashkar-e-Tayiba. He was indoctrinated and trained in the use of firearms and explosives. 

After being alerted by Mumbai police, the task force and counterintelligence officials visited Rukhia's father's house in King Kothi area. They seized some documents and letters from there as well as from the new house of the couple at Barkas.

The police, however, said the finds were not incriminating.

Though the Hyderabad police made it clear that Nasir has no criminal record here, they questioned his father-in-law Abeed Ali (60). 

Nasir's maternal relatives claimed the slain militant's parents are living in Yemen now. The police sources said that both Nasir's wife and her father claimed they had no inkling about the activities of Nasir.

The police, however, suspect that Nasir might have held discussions with some people during his July visit before he went to Mumbai and planned the twin blasts.

The police are now probing into the links of Nasir with other fundamentalist elements in Hyderabad, particularly with Asghar Ali, the prime accused in the Haren Pandya murder case.

The police are also trying to find out whether he had visited Hyderabad after the twin blasts in Mumbai on August 25 and whether he had obtained fake driving license or fake passport from here in the recent past.


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