India Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj on
Wednesday appealed to Indian citizens to help her locate the family of
Geeta, a hearing and speech-impaired woman, who had been 'stranded' in
Pakistan for over a decade before returning to her home country.
Geeta,
who had accidentally wandered across the border as an 11-year-old,
returned to India in Oct 2015 with the help of the Edhi Foundation,
which had adopted and raised the girl until she was 23.
Since
her return, several Indian couples had claimed that Geeta was their
daughter, but she failed to recognise them. She is currently staying
with a non-governmental organisation (NGO) in Indore.
On
Monday, the Indian foreign minister posted pages from Geeta's diary on
her official Twitter account, which she said were obtained from
Pakistan, and written in a local Indian dialect in Devanagari script.
In the tweet, Swaraj appealed to the people of her
country to help identify the area where the dialect is prevalent and
what Geeta's words convey.
"This will help us locate her home and unite her with her family," Swaraj added in her tweet.
In October, Swaraj had appealed to the people of India to help the authorities locate Geeta's family.
At the time, the foreign minister had offered a reward of Indian Rs100,000 for anyone who helped locate Geeta's parents.
Geeta's Tale
Geeta was found wandering near the India border in Lahore in 2002 by Pakistan Rangers personnel.
They
handed the child over to the Lahore branch of the Edhi Foundation —
Pakistan’s largest social welfare organisation, founded by late
philanthropist Abdul Sattar Edhi. Later, she was shifted to Karachi.
After
identifying a family as her own through a picture sent by Indian
officials, Geeta finally returned to India on October 26, 2015, with the
head of Edhi Foundation, Bilquis Edhi.
She was received by senior diplomats from the Pakistan High Commission.
Among
those waiting to meet her at the airport was Janardhan Mahato from
Bihar, who she had earlier identified as her father from one of many
photographs sent to her by the Indian High Commission in Islamabad.
But in a tragic twist, just hours after arriving in Delhi, she told officials she did not know the family.
Sushma
Swaraj then vowed to find her parents after a DNA test. However, the
girl's DNA did not match the Mahato family when results came out a month
later.
Geeta's case had come into limelight after the release of Salman Khan blockbuster hit Bajrangi Bhaijaan earlier in 2015.
The
movie is based on a fictional story of a speech-impaired, six-year-old
girl Munni who stumbled across the Pak-India border and greatly
resembled the real-life story of Geeta.