ISI agent Ijaj's lifestyle raised many eyebrows at Ara village

ARA: The arrest of suspected ISI agent Mohammad Kalam alias Ijaj has shocked the villagers of Azimabad, his in-laws native village. Despite being apprehensive of harassment by police, the villagers demanded capital punishment to Ijaj.
They find it difficult to believe that Ijaj had been arrested on charges of sharing strategic information with Pakistan.
Ijaj, a handsome youth, married Asma Khatoon, divorced daughter of Shamsher Mansoor with the help of his acquaintance, Babar of Narhi village under Sahar police station, who is Shamsher's nephew and worked as a cloth hawker in Kolkata.
The marriage was solemnized at Azimabad in October 2014. Ijaj introduced himself as a resident of Kolkata dealing in cloth and also claimed to be an orphan. He never disclosed his background to anyone. He stayed at the village for over two months and left for Bareilly with his wife in January 2015, where he lived at a rented house near the railway station.
Sazzad Ansari, mukhia, Azimabad panchayat, Akbar Ali, up sarpanch and Mahendra, sarpanch, said Ijaj, prior to his marriage worked as a hawker at the village, and after marriage helped his father-in-law in his work. But his extravagant lifestyle raised eyebrows.
They said had they known Ijaj was an ISI agent, the villagers would have themselves handed him over to police.
Shamsher, Ijaj's father in-law said and his brother in-law Aamir said, "Ijaj talked on mobile throughout the day with his brothers and acquaintances in Kolkata but he could not gather what he talked about as he was hard of hearing. He said several rich people used to visit Ijaj in Bareilly everyday. His wife Asma said she could never imagine he had links with ISI. Had she not been in her advanced stage of pregnancy, she would have aborted her child," Asma said.
Asma too demanded capital punishment for ijaj. Shamsher said he had no idea that Ijaj was a Pakistani national and was involved in anti-national activities. Meanwhile, Asma along with her father and sister Shehnaz has returned to her native village.