Lucknow, July 17: The Dalit woman who claims "Pakistani" terrorist Mohammad Abid is her long lost son Praveen met him in Lucknow jail today but the apparently tearful thirty-something told her he was not her son.

" Mataji, main aapka beta nahin hoon (Mother, I'm not your son)," Mahesha Devi quoted Abid as telling her during a 15-minute meeting.

But the dairy farmer's wife from Meerut, who had rushed to Lucknow on Friday after seeing a photograph in a newspaper, said she wasn't convinced and would move court seeking a DNA test.

Mahesha's older son Praveen Jatav was around 25 when he disappeared in May 2006 after allegedly being framed by Delhi police as a gangster.

Last Thursday, a Lucknow court handed life terms to three men arrested in November 2007, ruling they were Pakistani Jaish-e-Mohammed operatives sent to India on a terrorist mission. One of the three was Mohammad Abid alias Fatte.

"Abid has scars on his forehead and right knee, exactly like Praveen. He even talks like Praveen used to. But he kept trying to persuade me that he was not my son," Mahesha told The Telegraph.

She said Praveen had had his name tattooed on his right arm but she couldn't find it on Abid. "Can a tattoo be removed?" she wondered.

Abid's defence lawyer, Shoeb Ahmad, had earlier told this newspaper that a tattoo seemed to have been blackened out on Abid's right arm.

"Abid said he was a resident of Mozang Road in Lahore and that his father's name was Mohammad Rafique. He has a beard, but Praveen liked to be clean-shaven," Mahesha said.

"I showed him a photograph of Praveen's wife Prabha and son Anshul but he didn't recognise them or us."

Prashant Sharma, district magistrate in charge of Lucknow, had allowed Mahesha, younger son Pawan and Shoeb, who is helping Mahesha on his own, to meet Abid.

"Pawan and I were crying inconsolably during the meeting in the visitors' room at the jail. Even Abid had tears in his eyes. I still want the government to crosscheck my claim through a DNA test," Mahesha said.

She will return to Meerut tomorrow to discuss the planned court plea with her family.

Praveen was a driver with a travel agency and had left Meerut for Delhi with four customers in an SUV on May 5, 2006. Two days later, Mahesha says, Delhi police said that all five were gangsters and that four of them had been killed in an encounter while a fifth, named Praveen, had fled.

Since then, Mahesha has been waiting for her son to return.

"Abid kept saying he was a Muslim from Pakistan. But we have heard stories of police torture - a decade is long enough for the police to make someone forget everything or pretend that he is not the same person," Mahesha said.