Nanded: Geeta, the Indore-based hearing and speech impaired woman who returned to India from Pakistan in 2015 after staying there for several years, has come to Nanded in Maharashtra with the hope of finding her parents.
Geeta was 7 or 8 years old when she was found sitting alone in the Samjhauta Express at Lahore station by Pakistan Rangers around 20 years ago. She was adopted there by a person from Edhi Foundation.
She was brought back to India on October 26, 2015, following efforts made by then external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj, who called her "Hindustan ki beti" (India's daughter). Swaraj had also met her and assured that the government was making every effort to trace her parents.
Geeta, believed to be around 30 years old now, is currently living at the 'Anand Service Society', an NGO working for disabled persons, in Madhya Pradesh's Indore city. Several couples have come forward claiming to be her parents, but she has not recognised any of them and none could substantiate their claims.
Government officials from Indore and the NGO have been trying to trace her home and parents. Geeta has also not given up hope and visited Nanded on Tuesday along with members of the NGO to search for her home and family.
During an interaction with reporters here with the help of the NGO's sign language expert Gyanendra Purohit, who has accompanied her, Geeta said she has been trying to find her parents. She conveyed that her home was near a railway station with a hospital, temple and river nearby.
Purohit said they have come to Nanded in this context. A train called Sachkhand Express runs from Nanded to Amritsar, and the Samjhauta Express, in which she was found, operates from Amritsar to Pakistan," he said.
"A town called Basar in Telangana, located around 100 km from Nanded, resembles the place Geeta describes as her childhood home, so we came here," Purohit said. Nanded's police inspector Dwarkadas Chikhlikar told
PTI that their team was providing all help to Geeta, Purohit and others accompanying her. "Our team accompanied her during the search and it will work with the NGO members as long as Geeta is here," he said.
