Woman found in Kerala 7 years ago heads back home to Nepal

Sita Khanal did not remember her name, who her family was or where she came from when she was spotted wandering aimlessly in a north Kerala town seven years ago.

It took years of treatment aided by the NGO Health Oriented Project Establishment (HOPE), based in Kannur, and an MSW intern Jastina Nivil’s days of interaction with the now 52-year-old that helped her piece her life together -- she is Sita from Nepal’s Kapilavastu, the land of Buddha. Sita is now returning home after she located her village on Google Maps which Jastina showed her.

Sita was spotted wandering by local police in Kannur’s Payyanur and brought to HOPE in February 2015. It was only in June-July last year that they managed to establish her identity. She was undergoing psychiatric treatment during these years.

The volunteers at HOPE, including its General Secretary K S Jayamohan who took it on himself to reunite her with her family, did try all these years to find more about her but her language was an impediment. None could figure out that she was speaking Nepali and her reticent nature added more trouble.

Whenever she spoke initially, she gave herself different names -- Umakala, Barmala, Vanamala and Laxmi. But as the treatment continued, her condition improved and then Jastina, who had quit her teaching job to study MSW, landed at HOPE for an internship. Jayamohan said he asked her to cull out as much information as she could.

Jastina, who had worked in a Delhi school and had some knowledge of Hindi, got a breakthrough soon after. “I started interacting with her and then I understood she was from Nepal. She told me her name was Sita. I wasn’t convinced at first. Then she gave the names of husband and children,” Jastina told DH.

She found out that Khanal was a popular surname in Nepal. With the breakthrough, Jastina dug deeper and showed her pictures of Lord Budha, to which Sita reverently responded and said that her husband is a priest in a Buddha shrine. She was asked about her village and shown places as well as shrines on the Google Map. She identified her village, Jastina said.

Following this, HOPE officials reached out to the Nepal Embassy in India as well as the Ministry of External Affairs seeking help to establish her identity and locate her family in the Himalayan country.

A search in Kapilavastu with the help of Nepal-based NGO and authorities managed to locate Sita’s family, Jayamohan said.