'Every Karna deserves right to meet his Kunti': Abandoned 41 years ago as 3-day-old in Nagpur, Dutch mayor back to find mom

NAGPUR:A baby born to an unwed mother in Nagpur on Feb 10, 1985, is abandoned at a city shelter within three days of his birth and adopted a month later by a Dutch couple visiting Mumbai. The infant has a protected, affluent upbringing in the Netherlands that sets him up for a fulfilling life and a career in public service that sees him become mayor of Heemstede, a prosperous town and muncipality in north Holland, around 30km from Amsterdam, in 2024.

The perfect happy ending to a story that started with a tragic misstep? It’s complicated. Falgun Binnendijk, named by a nurse at Nagpur’s Matru Seva Sangh after the month of the Hindu calendar in which he was born, has long made peace with being an adopted child. But like Karna in Mahabharata, Falgun’s thoughts won’t let him rest until he has met his “Kunti”.


Three visits to Nagpur later, the Dutch mayor Falgun Binnendijk who first “felt a familiarity” with India as an 18-year-old tourist hasn’t given up hope yet. His last trip, in Dec 2025, turned unexpectedly fruitful when a team led by Vinod Jadhav, a senior official of the district administration, traced a retired nurse who was at Matru Seva Sangh when Falgun ended up there.

Turns out she was the same nurse who gave the Heemstede mayor his name. “It was overwhelming for me to hear her recall everything. I had just met the woman who gave me my identity,” Falgun told TOI .

On his previous visit to Nagpur in Aug 2024, seven years after he started the mission to find his biological mother, Falgun had approached Matru Seva Sangh, hoping to trace his birth records.

Municipal commissioner Abhijeet Chaudhari and district collector Vipin Itankar tapped all sources of information and the officials were able to retrieve limited documentation, including his date of birth and his mother’s name. The documents confirmed that she was an unwed mother, but there was no address. “At the time, I felt maybe this is it,” Falgun said. “Everything in my life was complete except this unfinished business.”

The mayor’s Dutch wife, with whom he has four children, keeps prodding him to continue the search. Reading the Mahabharata, where Kunti secretly gives birth to Karna and leaves him inside a box floating in a river, has fuelled his quest. “Every Karna deserves, and must have the right to meet his Kunti,” he said.

On whether he imagines how a meeting with his mother would go, the 40-year-old said it would be as much a catharsis for her as it would be a longawaited reunion for him.

“I believe she may be living in guilt, thinking she did something unpardonable. I just want to meet her once and tell her that I have a beautiful life, and her child grew up loved.”

Falgun has already named his daughter after her biological grandmother. He plans to return to Nagpur next year to resume his search.