Sarai Mir, November 11
The return of Abu Salem from Lisbon has sent the residents into a shell. This infamous native of this mofussil town,25 km from Azamgarh district, has brought them more notoriety than they can handle. They clearly do not welcome the sudden focus of the media.
Located on the bank of river Tons, Sarai Mir gives every sign of recent riches. It has more than 60 Public Call Offices for a population. A huge palatial building has come up next to Abu Salem’s ancestral house. Shopkeepers in the 27 shops reportedly owned by the family in Ali Ahmed Katra appear prosperous but clam up when asked about the identity of the owner.
Abu Salem has reportedly never returned after he left this place.They don’t want to talk about the local lad who made good in the underworld of Mumbai and the Middle East. His brothers have reportedly moved out to work in Sultanpur and Lucknow and his mother and sister now live in Mubarakpur. “As far as we know he does not keep any contact with this place” informs SP Azamgarh S.K. Bhagat.
Abu Salem was a boy when his lawyer father Abdul Qayyum Ansari died and his elder brother Ali Ahmed, brought up his widow and four brothers. “He was selling watches smuggled from Nepal till the age of 25 when he went to Mumbai,” says a neighbour.
People open up most cautiously. From the moment he acquired a high profile in Mumbai underworld as a sharpshooter of Dawood Ibrahim in the murder of cassette king Gulshan Kumar, Abu Salem has not maintained links with his home ,says a resident.
The other notorious underworld person with links in the district the head of the Dawood the head of the dreaded company himself. His younger brother Mustaqeem’s wife is from Bisham in Azamgarh district, point out the residents of Azamgarh.
Once the home to scholars and literateurs like Shibli Nomani, Ayodhya Singh Uoadhyaya Hariaudh and Kaifi Azmi the district is now supplying sharp-shooters to mafia dons operating from Mumbai, Dubai, Malaysia and Singapore, says a local schoolteacher.
Travelling through the stretch one can not spot any economic activity indicative of the visble prosperity in the region.Posh, sprawling buildings springing up on either side of the road tell a tale at variance with the economics of the area. Almost every second family has a member working in the middle east or some South East Asian country sending remittance home. That partly explains the presense of 60 PCOs in this small town.
Residents of this pre-dominantly Muslim town assert that they are neglected, since they have no representation in the bureaucracy. That is the prime reason that many Azamgarh residents pick jobs in the Gulf, doing menial jobs for annual salaries of about Rs 78,000, first going to Bombay to find jobs abroad. The hawala route is how many of them send back their money home often getting into trouble.
