YOU go and kill him, I've nothing to do with him. And tell the whole world that I, Abu Salem's mother, earn my livelihood by rolling bidis and selling them," wails the 65-year-old woman in anger, her eyes brimming with tears. This is the plight of a dejected mother living in penury and ignominy in Sarai Mir village near Azamgarh, thanks to her son whose name has become synonymous with terror and intimidation.
Strangely, in Sarai Mir it's not easy to locate Abu Salem's house. Finally, a local ISD/STD booth operator agrees to take us to the house where his mother and two brothers live. It is a single-storeyed, lower middle-class house in Pathan Tola mohalla. "Mothers can only give birth. They have no control over their children. Abu is dead for me and I am dead for him. Even when he was a child he never listened to me," says Abu's mother, who refuses to reveal her name to us.
Abu Salem left Sarai Mir when he was still in his teens. According to the local police, Salem never committed any crime in Sarai Mir and Azamgarh. He was married to a minor, but the marriage did not last. His mother recalls that Abu was not very happy with the marriage and divorced his wife before fleeing to Mumbai like many other young boys of his age. "For many years he worked in Mumbai as a driver with rich people from Azamgarh. Then he came into contact with Dawood's men," says a resident of the locality. Before joining the D Company, he ran a small-time passport racket. Also known as Abu Saamaan (he specialised in illegal arms and saamaan in underworld parlance means a gun), he graduated to become the righthand man of Dawood's brother Anees. After the 1993 bomb blasts, he settled in Dubai.
Abu may be a big-time criminal but at times he is snubbed by his country cousins living in Sarai Mir. Threatened by Abu over the phone, one Ozaifa of Beena Para returned the threat with the same aggressiveness: "Stop threatening me or else I'll go and hack all your family members just now." Local people say it worked.
