Geeta, a deaf and mute Indian girl who has been stranded in Pakistan for 13 years, identified on Thursday her family belonging to Bihar.
Geeta identified her father, step-mother and step-siblings in a photograph sent to her by the Indian High Commission in Islamabad, NDTV reported.
She is likely to be flown home once her documents are sorted out.
According to Faisal Edhi, the son of famous Pakistani philanthropist Abdul Sattar Edhi, the Indian government has informed Pakistan’s foreign office in writing that the country has accepted Geeta as its citizen.
Shortly after news broke of Geeta identifying her family, Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj tweeted:
Geeta will be back in India soon. We have located her family. She will be handed over to them only after the DNA test.#Geeta
— Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) October 15, 2015
Geeta was stuck in Pakistan for over a decade and unable to return to her native India because she could not remember or explain exactly where she was from.
Geeta, in her early 20s, lives in a women’s shelter in Karachi run by the Edhi Foundation, Pakistan’s largest welfare organisation. News of her plight surfaced in 2012 but no progress was made in tracing her roots.
She was found by the Lahore police 13 years ago, sitting alone and disorientated on the Samjhota Express that had travelled across the border.
Officers took the girl to the Edhi Foundation in Lahore, where she remained while the charity tried to track down her family, but met with no success.
She was later taken to Karach by Bilqees Edhi.
Speaking through sign language, Geeta told AFP that one day she became annoyed after being told off by her parents. She left the house and kept walking for hours.
“Then”, she swings her hands back and forth in a loop, a sign for a moving train, “I boarded the train and slept.”
Through sign language, she said her home is next to a river, set in fields with the house behind a hospital and a restaurant.
Following the development today, sources say she is now expected to depart for India as early as October 26.
