Her passion for football took her to the national team for an international championship - but an abandoned girl will miss the under-13 tournament in Vietnam.
BHUBANESWAR: Her passion for football took her to the national team for an international championship - but an abandoned girl will miss the under-13 tournament in Vietnam because her parents could not be identified in time.
Twelve-year-old Mamali Das missed an opportunity to represent the country in the under-13 football championship organised by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) as she failed to get a passport. She had been abandoned by her parents and they could not be identified in time.
Despite her excellent performance as a defender in the training camp at Gwalior, Mamali failed to become part of the Indian team for no fault of hers and will return here dejected on June 20.
The good news however, is that her family members have been found, though not on time to procure her passport.
An inmate of a home for street children, Mamali was one among the three girls from Orissa, who was selected to represent the country in the AFC championship for under 13 girls to be held in Vietnam from June 21-29.
While Karishma Oram of Rourkela and Subhaprava Rout are all set to go to Vietnam, "Mamali was dropped from the team at the last minute because we could not produce her passport," said Odisha State Women's Football Association general secretary Sahadev Rout.
Rout said that though it was a pre-requisite to produce passports before joining the national training camp, the association had assured the authorities that they would manage to arrange it for Mamali.
However, efforts of the association and volunteers of the shelter home failed to yield any result. "Mamali could not get a passport because we could not identify her parents," said Pravas Panda, the advisor of Society for Nature Education and Health (SNEH), which runs the home.
Mamali's mother and her brother have been identified. Her father had, however, died in a road accident, said Panda who on behalf of the shelter home launched a drive to find Mamali's family.
According to Panda, Mamali was abandoned by her parents when they were staying at a slum near the NABARD office here some years ago.
Mamali was taken to Chandbali for some time by a person and later sent back to the city. "She was rescued by rickshaw pullers in 2007. The ricksha pullers brought her to the shelter home," Panda said.
Now at her new home, Mamali is a student of class VI at the government school at Irc village.
"Football is Mamali's passion... she will certainly play for the country one day," Panda said.
Child rights activist Mahendra Parida is hopeful that a procedure would be put in place for making passports for orphan and abandoned children and said he would draw attention of the external affairs minister to help talented youngsters like Mamali.
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