Ananthakrishnan G | TNN
Thiruvananthapuram: When football selectors announced Kerala’s sub-junior team after a camp in Kottayam on Monday, Raja was jubilant. The 14-year-old knew he had made it to the list, leaving behind days of despair when he had fallen into a begging racket.
Hailing from Salem in Tamil Nadu, Raju first hit the headlines in 2002 as an eightyear-old rescued from the begging mafia in Thrissur. The boy lost his mother very early and his father, a leprosy patient, asked for alms to survive. A young man who came into contact with his father took away Raju and brought him to Kerala where he was thrown into a begging racket. The gang leader was a man called Chinnaswamy who always travelled by car.
“They forced him into begging. His daily target was Rs 50 and if he failed to make the amount, they would beat him up and burn him with cigarette butts,’’ says Jos Maveli, who runs the NGO that rescued him in 2002. Maveli remembers it was a bookseller from Delhi visiting Thrissur who alerted him about Raja.
The boy had run away from the gang and was sitting at the bus station crying when the man saw and rescued him.
The NGO admitted him in a school. He is now a Class VIII student of the NSS higher secondary school. It was at the school that he started to kick the football. Soon, he was invited by the school coach to join the football team. On Tuesday, Raja boarded a train to Punjab where the team will participate in the all-India sub-junior football championship beginning on September 22.
Thiruvananthapuram: When football selectors announced Kerala’s sub-junior team after a camp in Kottayam on Monday, Raja was jubilant. The 14-year-old knew he had made it to the list, leaving behind days of despair when he had fallen into a begging racket.
Hailing from Salem in Tamil Nadu, Raju first hit the headlines in 2002 as an eightyear-old rescued from the begging mafia in Thrissur. The boy lost his mother very early and his father, a leprosy patient, asked for alms to survive. A young man who came into contact with his father took away Raju and brought him to Kerala where he was thrown into a begging racket. The gang leader was a man called Chinnaswamy who always travelled by car.
“They forced him into begging. His daily target was Rs 50 and if he failed to make the amount, they would beat him up and burn him with cigarette butts,’’ says Jos Maveli, who runs the NGO that rescued him in 2002. Maveli remembers it was a bookseller from Delhi visiting Thrissur who alerted him about Raja.
The boy had run away from the gang and was sitting at the bus station crying when the man saw and rescued him.
The NGO admitted him in a school. He is now a Class VIII student of the NSS higher secondary school. It was at the school that he started to kick the football. Soon, he was invited by the school coach to join the football team. On Tuesday, Raja boarded a train to Punjab where the team will participate in the all-India sub-junior football championship beginning on September 22.
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