Hundreds poured onto the streets of Jammu and Kashmir’s border district of Rajouri on Friday, May 22, as 14-year-old Mohammad Yasir, who had just won the gold medal at the Asian Under-15 Boxing Championships in Uzbekistan, returned home.
Garlanded, lifted on shoulders and greeted with chants, the teenager’s homecoming marked a remarkable rise from homelessness, poverty and the constant threat of losing his way to drugs.
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Yasir beat Uzbekistan’s Abdullah Karimjonov in the final of the Boys’ 58kg category to win the gold medal.
For the residents of Rajouri, Yasir’s victory in Tashkent was a rare moment of collective pride. For the teenager himself, it was another hard-fought round in a life that has tested him far beyond the boxing ring.
Elated by Yasir's achievement at the continental championships, a local was quoted by IANS as saying, “Eid is one week away, but our Eid is today. Yasir the boxer has come here as an Asian champion - the boy who grew up in poverty, the boy whose mother worked in people’s homes and cleaned their utensils. Today, he has made Rajouri’s name known all over the world.”
Besides his daily grind as a boxer, he works as a cook in Rajouri to support his family. He lost his father when he was six years old. His father's untimely death left the family in financial distress. But worse followed soon after.
A year later, the family’s modest house was demolished during an anti-encroachment drive carried out by the Jammu and Kashmir government, leaving them homeless.
Forced out of their ancestral village, Yasir, his mother Naseema, brother and sister shifted to a cramped one-room accommodation at an industrial training institute in Rajouri. The surroundings were difficult, with drug abuse rampant in the locality.
Yasir admitted that had it not been for boxing, he could have drifted towards drugs. “Had it not been for boxing, I would have ended up on drugs because of the influence of my neighbourhood,” he said.
Source: India Latest News, Breaking News Today, Top News Headlines | Times Now
