CAPE TOWN: A baby stolen from her sleeping mother’s arms shortly after birth has been found by the family through an astonishing coincidence 17 years later, her biological family and South African police said on Friday.

A 50-year-old woman has been arrested and charged with kidnapping after pupils noticed a remarkable likeness between the 17-year-old and her younger biological sister who started attending the same school this year.

DNA tests have confirmed that the older girl is the daughter of Celeste and Morne Nurse, who was snatched from Groote Schuur hospital as a three-day-old baby, named Zephany, in April 1997.

The parents, who later had three more children, have celebrated Zephany’s birthday every year since she was kidnapped, never giving up hope that their first-born would come back to them one day, her father Morne said.

Zephany grew up with a different name in a different family.

But last month her biological sister, Cassidy Nurse, started high school at the same school as Zephany, and fellow pupils noticed the startling resemblance she bore to a final-year student.

When Cassidy told her parents about the girl, the father approached Zephany at the school. When he saw the striking resemblance between the girls, he contacted the police.

Without knowing it, the Nurse family had been living within a couple of kilometres of their kidnapped daughter.—AFP

Published in Dawn, February 28th, 2015

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