India envoy to meet girl stranded in Pakistan

NEW DELHI: External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj has directed the Indian envoy in Pakistan to look into the case of a hearing and speech impaired Indian woman who has been stranded in the neighbouring country for at least 15 years.

In a post on Twitter on Monday, Swaraj said: “I have asked Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan Dr TCA Raghavan to go to Karachi with Mrs Raghavan and meet this girl.” She was responding to a tweet from leading rights activist and Pakistan’s former human rights minister Ansar Burney, who has launched a fresh campaign to reunite the woman with her family in India.

HT had reported on August 2 about efforts by Pakistani activists to unite the woman – whom Karachi-based rights activist Bilqees Edhi christened Geeta as no one knows her real name – with her par- ents and relatives.

The renewed push is inspired by the success of the Bollywood film, Bajrangi Bhaijaan, which features Salman Khan overcoming all odds to take a deaf and mute girl back to her relatives in Pakistan. Burney, who will be in India in September to meet the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, said: “I went to India three years ago with photos and video of Geeta to try and find her family but I couldn’t trace any leads. My trust has started a cross-border campaign to try and find Geeta’s relatives,” Burney told HT over phone from Britain.

Geeta now lives with Bilqees Edhi, the wife of Abdul Sattar Edhi, founder of Edhi Foundation, Pakistan’s largest charity. “The girl, whose age is about 22 to 24, keeps telling me through gestures that she wants to fly back home in an aeroplane. Sometimes, she cries a lot. I pray to Allah that she is reunited with her family soon,” Bilqees told HT from Karachi.