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India working to bring back Gita, locate family: Sushma

She also conveyed that she had visited a temple with her father.

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“Not just Gita, I hope the Indian government can help unite Salman Ahmed with his family too”, said Burney.

The girl, who is now 23-year-old, started living in Karachi after all efforts to trace her family in India remained unsuccessful.

Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said on Saturday that India is completing the necessary formalities to bring back Geeta, a hearing- and speech-impaired Indian girl stranded in Karachi, to India.

“Geeta wants to go back, India is very good”, Faisal Edhi said, interpreting her sign language.

The news channels have been showing the story of Gita drawing a similarity with the reel life character “Munni” of the Bollywood blockbuster “Bajrangi Bhaijaan“.

Necessary formalities are being completed to bring Geeta back to India and Sushma Swaraj appealed to her followers’ on Twitter to help locate Geeta’s family. With more than one family having come forward to claim her, the task is getting harder.

Earlier, another couple from Amritsar claimed Gita was their daughter Pooja, who they used to call Guddi.

Salman Ahmed’s family wrote to the Indian High Commission in Islamabad in March 2013, and sought aid in getting their son back.

23-year-old Geeta is believed to have mistakenly crossed into Pakistani territory as a child.

The deaf and dumb woman had accidentally strayed across the border to Pakistan in 2003 when she was just 11 years old.

Geeta, who is illiterate, mimes the explosion of a hand grenade, and shows how she ducked and ran before being caught by armed men.

Faisal’s mother Bilquees Edhi, who practically raised Geeta and gave her the name she is known by, insists that she should find a Hindu man of her choice and “settle down”. “While we are working out the details of her stay, we are also looking for plans to offer her skills training and coaching so that she can be self-reliant”, said the official.

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The girl was handed over to the Edhi Foundation, a social welfare organisation in Pakistan. Geeta is stuck in Pakistan for more than a decade after losing contact with her family.

Geeta looks forward to the day when she can return to her village in India