Mumbai: Footballer reunites with family after decade in children’s home

MUMBAI: Faheem Wasim Khan (19) was reunited with his parents on Gandhi Jayanti after a decade at a children’s home.
Faheem, then eight, was travelling with his parents and two siblings by train from Mumbai to their native village in Sultanpur district, UP, on May 9, 2010. They boarded at Kalyan station and at Nashik, while his parents were asleep, Faheem alighted to wash his mouth and fill drinking water in a bottle, but the train left before he could return.
His father alighted at Bhusawal, while his mother went ahead with her daughters. Faheem boarded another train, hoping to find his parents.
“He was crying and only remembered his parents were from Sultanpur. GRP personnel at Khandwa handed him over to Navjivan Children’s Home,” said Wasim’s maternal uncle Aman Khan, who has a transport business at Govandi, and who had hosted his brother-in-law and his family for a month here. Faheem’s father, now working in Saudi Arabia, had brought his family to Mumbai from Sultanpur on a vacation.
Faheem was under the care of Sister Ambika at the children’s home, while his father and uncle searched for him in Nashik and Mumbai.
“I was taken care of well. There were 24 other children. They sent me to Holy Spirit Convent School, from where I cleared my SSC exam. I then appeared for my class 12th exams and am awaiting the results,” Faheem said over the phone.
His family searched for him at dargahs in Nashik and Mumbai, railway stations, mortuaries and registered a missing person’s complaint.
Faheem excelled in basketball and football, played state-level football matches and represented MP at a national-level football championship. His uncle said the family, though disturbed, never lost hope.
As Faheem turned 19 recently, the home said they could not keep him there as he was no longer a minor. Since he remembered Sultanpur as his parents’ home district, an official of the home took him there on September 1. He was handed over to district child welfare department, from where he reached a childcare centre in Sultanpur.
Sultanpur’s additional superintendent of police Shivraj contacted local activist and social worker Gufran Ahmed Saifi, who shared the info with his photograph with anganwadi workers and activists on social media.
“Within three hours, his uncle, mother Nasibun Nisa and elder sister Saharbano came to meet me,” Saifi said. The boy and his mother recognised each other, and locked in embrace for several minutes, they cried.“I want to follow my dream of playing football for India,” he said.