HYDERABAD: Is 30-year-old Geeta, who came home from Pakistan five years ago, the same woman as Saritha who went missing from
Peddapalli
district? Yes, says Saritha’s father Bolli Swamy of Tharupalli village. He is certain that Geeta is none other than his daughter Saritha who went missing when she was just 7 or 8 years old.
Swamy insists that a DNA test be done so that the row over Geeta’s identity is resolved . “I met the collector and I was assured that my petition would be looked into,” Swamy, who works in the gram panchayat in
Kalvasrirampur
mandal, said. Sometime during 2002, his younger daughter, born with speech and hearing impairment, went missing from their home.
“By the time I returned from the field, my hut was burnt due to an electric wire falling on it,” Swamy recalled.
“Someone told me that they saw her heading to the railway station. I searched and waited for five years,” he said. When Geeta, Indore-based hearing and speech impaired woman, was brought to
Basar
in
Nirmal
on December 15 by an NGO in Indore in the hope of finding her parents, Swamy looked closely at her photographs on social media. Swamy said he noticed a mole on Geeta’s left eyelid which even Saritha had.
Geeta was in Pakistan for 13 years before she was handed over to India by Pakistan. In October 2015, the then external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj took interest in Geeta’s case and Pakistan handed her over to India.
Sushil Rao is Editor-Special Reports, at The Times of India, Hyde...
Read MoreSushil Rao is Editor-Special Reports, at The Times of India, Hyderabad. He began his journalism career at the age of 20 in 1988. He is a gold medalist in journalism from the Department of Communication and Journalism, Arts College, Osmania University, Hyderabad from where he did his post-graduation from. He has been with The Times of India’s Hyderabad edition since its launch in 2000. He has also done an introductory course in film studies from the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune, and also from the Central University of Kerala equipping himself with the knowledge of filmmaking for film criticism. He has authored four books. In his career spanning 34 years, he has worked for five newspapers and has also done television reporting. He was also a web journalist during internet’s infancy in the mid 1990s in India. He covers defence, politics, diaspora, innovation, administration, the film industry, Hyderabad city and Telangana state, and human interest stories. He is also a podcaster, blogger, does video reporting and makes documentaries.
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