20 years after Geeta accidentally crossed the border to Pakistan, she has finally been reunited with her mother at the age of 29. And for this deaf and mute girl and her mother, this reunion has truly been a long time coming.
Geeta was allegedly only 9 when she accidentally crossed the border into Pakistan. After being rescued by the welfare organization Edhi Foundation, Geeta spent the majority of her young life in Pakistan, before her story went viral.
She stayed at the Edhi centre for years and I took care of her and we named her Fatima later when I realised she was a Hindu we named her Geeta and even though she couldn’t speak or hear but we communicated properly through sign language.
-Ms. Bilquees Edhi to Dawn, via The Hindu
Thereafter, in 2015, thanks to the intervention of the then External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Geeta returned to India but stayed in an NGO.
गीता – भारत की बेटी का भारत में स्वागत.
— Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) October 26, 2015
Geeta – Welcome home our daughter.
And after years of searching for her biological family, Geeta was finally reunited with her mother, at Parbhani in Maharashtra.
Meena told us that her daughter has a burn mark on her stomach and when we checked, it turned out to be true.
While no DNA testing has been conducted as of yet, the search, headed by Gyanendra Purohit of NGO Anand Services Society, involved screening of at least a dozen families from various locations, including Telangana, Rajasthan, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh.
But finally, the collaborative efforts yielded the right results, allowing a young girl to get reunited with her family. Real-life “Bajrangi Bhaijaan” indeed!
