KARACHI: A Pakistani charity has declined a $150,000 donation from the Indian prime minister in recompense for 13 years of caring for a lost deaf-mute Indian girl whose quest to return home captivated the subcontinent, a charity spokesman said on Tuesday.

Geeta, a slim young Hindu woman now in her 20s, was a child when she mistakenly wandered across one of the world’s most heavily militarised borders to find herself stranded in Pakistan.

During her time there, she was cared for by the Edhi Foundation, a Pakistani charity, but since Geeta was mute and illiterate, it took years for her to explain her origins by pointing at maps.

Diplomats finally stepped in to help after the release this year of a hit Bollywood film with a plot similar to Geeta’s life story sparked a belated blaze of publicity.

Her odyssey home to her family has engrossed millions in Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan, where many families were sundered when the two became separate countries at independence from colonial ruler Britain in 1947.

The two nations have fought three wars since the partition.