Bollywood hit brings hope for mute Indian stuck in Pakistan

KARACHI: Deaf and mute, Geeta has been stuck in Pakistan for 13 years, unable to return to her native India because she cannot remember or explain exactly where she is from.
But after repeated false dawns, Geeta has new reason to hope.
Following fresh media coverage the Indian government this week pledged to bring her home, in an echo of a smash-hit Bollywood film.
“Bajrangi Bhaijaan,” featuring Indian superstars Salman Khan and Kareena Kapoor, tells the mirror image of Geeta’s story — a mute young Pakistani woman who ends up trapped in India.
Geeta, aged in her early 20s, lives in a women’s shelter in Karachi run by the Edhi Foundation, Pakistan’s largest welfare organization. News of her plight surfaced in 2012 but no progress was made in tracing her roots. But India’s High Commissioner (ambassador) to Pakistan T.C.A. Raghavan visited Geeta on Tuesday evening to collect preliminary information which could help track down her home and parents.
And afterwards Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj vowed to bring the story to a movie-style happy ending, tweeting: “We will bring Geeta back to India.” It is still unclear how long the formalities will take or whether her home town has been identified.
Although she cannot speak, Geeta can write the words “Telangana,” the name of a state in southern India, and “Peddavura,” the name of a village, in Hindi along with the number 193. Edhi officials speculate this may have been the number of her house.
Her memory of how she came to be in Pakistan is hazy and her account, communicated through improvised sign language, has changed over time.