NEW DELHI: Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said on Saturday that India is completing the necessary formalities to bring back Geeta, a hearing- and speech-impaired Indian girl stranded in Karachi, to India. 

“We are completing the necessary formalities to bring Geeta back to India,” she tweeted. 

Ms Swaraj also tweeted that during the past few days “four families from Punjab, Bihar, Jharkhand and UP have claimed Geeta as their daughter” and that she had requested the chief ministers of the states to “verify and report”. 

“Geeta conveyed to Indian high commissioner by gestures that they are seven brothers and sisters. She also conveyed that she had visited a temple with her father. Then she wrote down ‘Vaishno Devi’. With these details, please help locate Geeta’s family,” the minister tweeted. 

On Tuesday, the minister announced that the government would bring Geeta back to India after Indian High Commissioner T.C.A. Raghavan met Geeta at the Edhi Foundation in Karachi where the young woman has been staying for the past 12 years after she accidentally strayed into Pakistani territory. 

Four families claim that she is their relative

Ms Swaraj had requested the envoy to go to Karachi to meet Geeta. 

Pakistani human rights activist Ansar Burney, who has been closely pursuing Geeta’s case, had travelled to India in October 2012 with photographs of the girl but was unable to make progress in the case.

In 2003, Geeta — then 11 years old — was spotted by the Pakistan Rangers in Lahore, after she had strayed across the border. The girl was then handed over to the Edhi Foundation. Bilquis Edhi has named her Geeta. 

According to media reports, Geeta is a vegetarian and has set up a small “mandir” in her room at the Edhi Foundation where she prays. She also observes the Ramazan fast.

By arrangement with the Times of India

Published in Dawn, August 9th, 2015

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