Naseem Akhtar is now married and living with her husband, a water pump operator in Gidu Mental Hospital.

Naseem sobbed and wept as she related her tale to her aged father who had lost all hopes of finding her.

It was a hot summer morning of June 1951, while playing with other children before her house at Karachi, an old lady approached her and on the pretext of giving sweetmeats took her to a house and locked her there.

She forced the girl to beg for alms. For full five years she obeyed the command of the old woman and one day while she was away, Naseem escaped.

She went from place to place but could not find her home. Finally, she got into a train and was forced to leave it at Hyderabad, where she was caught by the Police.

She was produced before a magistrate, and he sent her to the Gidu Mental Hospital, thinking she had an unbalanced mind.

Naseem passed five years there. The hospital authorities tried to trace the whereabouts of the girl’s parents, but failed. Finally they decided to marry her to their water pump operator, Qurban Hussain, who did not know that the girl was actually his distant relation.

It was a couple of days after the marriage that Qurban’s relations visited him and suspected her of being Naseem, and wrote a letter to her father.

The aged parents last evening came from Karachi and identified the girl as their daughter.—Agencies