External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Monday asked New Delhi’s envoy to Islamabad T C A Raghavan to travel to Karachi and meet Geeta, a hearing and speech-impaired girl who inadvertently crossed into Pakistan over 14 years ago.

“I have asked Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan Dr T C A Raghavan to go to Karachi with Mrs Raghavan and meet this girl (sic),” she posted on Twitter after Pakistani social activist Ansar Burney tweeted about the girl, who had been found on Lahore Railway Station 14 years ago.

Sources said the High Commission of India in Islamabad had already got in touch with Karachi’s Edhi Foundation, which had been taking care of the girl. Geeta was just nine when Pakistan's Punjab Rangers personnel handed her over to the Edhi foundation. The foundation's Bilqees Edhi named her Geeta, as she could not tell or write her name properly. She was later sent to a shelter home in Karachi.

The Edhi Foundation’s effort to find her parents in India proved futile as the girl could not help much. Burney tweeted about Geeta after the Hindi film “Bajrangi Bhaijaan”, starring Salman Khan, made waves in both Pakistan and India.

The film revolves around a speech-impaired girl from Pakistan found in India, who is taken back to her family in Pakistan by an Indian man.
DH News Service