Union Minister Sushma Swaraj will meet Geeta today afternoon at Ministry of External Affairs. If the DNA tests match, Geeta will be handed over to that family. We saw her get married and then she left with her husband for Ludhiana.
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All of India will take care of you, Modi told her during meeting. “This is like rebirth for our family”.
Media in-charge at the Pakistan High Commission Manzoor Ali Memon told media that the commission would hold a reception for Geeta in the evening. Unable to communicate her address or identify her family, she had been christened Geeta by the charity’s owners.
She will be arriving from Karachi by Pakistan global Airlines Flight 272 on Monday at Indira Gandhi worldwide Airport, New Delhi at around 10:20am.
Geeta was reportedly seven or eight years old when she was found sitting alone on the Samjhauta Express by the Pakistan Rangers 15 years ago at Lahore railway station. She thanked Pakistan and the Edhi Foundation, the neighbouring country’s largest charity, for caring for and repatriating Geeta.
Geeta is being escorted to Delhi by Bilqees Edhi, the wife of the organisation’s founder, and Saba Edhi, her daughter-in-law. “I’m happy that her friends will eventually be reunited with her family but we are going to miss her”.
Geeta arrived on Monday morning, days after her family was identified by her in pictures sent from India.
But according to Edhi Foundation, she was a minor girl when they took her in a few 13 years ago.
“The Indian Deputy High Commissioner was called in and was informed of the threatening phone call received in the Governor House, Karachi, from New Delhi on October 23 2015”, the foreign ministry said. She said, in such a scenario, efforts would be made to convince her about the facts. She also played down the demand by a Pakistan high commission official for early release of Pakistani prisoners.
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She, however, refused to answer questions on whether Geeta’s homecoming will help improve relations between India and Pakistan.
