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Geeta, the Indian girl, returns from Pakistan after 15 years

by IBNS 26 Oct 2015, 09:01 am

New Delhi, Oct 26 (IBNS) Some 15 years after she strayed across the border and got stuck up in Pakistan, speech and hearing impaired Geeta came back to India on Monday morning to be reunited with her family.

Reports said Geeta landed in the international airport in Delhi from a Pakistan International Airlines flight from Karachi at 10.20am.

She was clad in a red and white salwar-kameez.

Geeta  was  accompanied by five representatives of the Edhi Foundation, including Bilqees Edhi, the Pakistani woman who adopted her and took her care all these years.

Faisal Edhi of the Edhi Foundation, Pakistan’s largest charity, told reporters they would stay in touch with Geeta through social media and even visit her.

Geeta, now 23,, was received at the airport by officials from the external affairs ministry and senior Pakistani diplomats.

Indian authorities are proceeding cautiously, according to MEA sources, because at least four families had come forward to claim her.

The woman apparently entered the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore on a train from India almost 15 years ago. She was found by police and sent to a state-run shelter.

She was then moved from one shelter to another – because she often tried to escape and quarrelled with staff – before she arrived at the Edhi Foundation. It was Bilqees Edhi who named her Geeta.


Geeta was just seven or eight years old when she was found sitting alone on the Samjhauta Express by the Pakistan Rangers  at the Lahore railway station.

Geeta has identified her father, step-mother and siblings from a photograph sent to her by the Indian High Commission in Islamabad. The family lives in Bihar.