By Nadia Fazlulhaq and W.P.Weerawardena, our airport correspondent
It would be a harrowing experience even for an adult, but for a two and a half year old child to be abandoned in a foreign land by her own mother would have been nothing less than terrifying. Little Dulakshi Dumesha Ratnayake was the unfortunate child who suffered this plight when she was taken away to Japan by her mother, without the consent of her father, only to be abandoned in an apartment in Tokyo.
It took a good Sri Lankan samaritan to finally fly her back home more than a year later and have her reunited with her father on Friday.
A picture of happiness: Roshani, the good samaritan and Dulakshi with her father
The saga began in May last year, when the girl’s mother left Sri Lanka for Japan, taking the child with her. The girl had lived with the mother in an apartment till August this year. However, for some unknown reason, the girl was abandoned by the mother and it was the Immigration and Emigration office in Shinagawa, Tokyo that took the child under its care and placed her in an orphanage where she stayed for four months.
The Tokyo Immigration office had close contacts with a Sri Lankan businesswoman Roshani Ichihara, proprietor of Ichiro Motoring Pvt Limited, and they had informed her about the abandoned child and had requested her if possible to track down at least one parent.
The untiring efforts of this woman paid off and on Friday there was a happy reunion back in Sri Lanka between Dulakshi and her father.
“My wife Nadee Kalpana Ranasinghe took the child and left for Japan on May 22, last year. From that day onwards I had no information about my wife or daughter. I was desperate,” C.Jayaratne, the child’s father told us when we met him at the airport.
Later, he said when he got to know that his wife had left him for good, he filed for divorce in the Mawanella district court. “Last July, a friend of mine in Japan, Udaya Wijeratne informed me that my daughter was with the Immigration and Emigration office in Japan. He also told me about Roshani and her efforts to reunite my daughter with her parents. On my part I went to the Foreign Ministry several times to get more information but they always told me they had nothing on her,” he said.
Speaking to The Sunday Times, Roshani said if not for the lethargy and indifference of Sri Lankan embassy officials in Japan Dulakshi would have been reunited with her father much earlier.
Dulakshi sharing happy moments at the orphanage
“ Some immigration officers in Japan told me about a little Sri Lankan girl who had been found tied to a hard object and being fed like an animal. I told an acquaintance of mine who travelled frequently from Sri Lanka to Japan to try and locate her family,” she said. Roshani whose husband is also Japanese tried to locate the child’s mother in Japan.
“Luckily, we met Udaya who knew the little girl’s father. We were in constant touch with the father after we were able to locate him through this acquaintance,” she said.
All the necessary documents to bring back Dulakshi from Japan were submitted to the Foreign Ministry here and a power of attorney obtained from the father was handed over to the Sri Lankan embassy in Japan.
However, in spite of all the documents being in place Roshani said even at the last moment embassy officials were stalling the process.
“I got the child from the orphanage on Wednesday but I had to wait for an embassy official to give the final approval. A female embassy official came to the premises about on and a half hour’s later and told me that the child could not be entrusted to me. However, eventually permission was granted, “ she said.Roshani said she was surprised by the sudden concern of the embassy after showing little concern over the welfare of the little girl all that time.