Bikram Vohra

By : Bikram Vohra

I am sure that Geeta’s arrival in India after 12,13,15 years (depending on which part of the media you are reading or watching) and being reunited with her family (if it is her family) in Bihar has nothing to do with great emotional timing seeing as how the final phases of the voting in the state are more than imminent.

Great to have your daughter back.

The photo ops are awesome seeing as how no one gave a toss about her for over a decade. Like no one gives a toss about hundreds of Indian fishermen who don’t deliberately stray but are victims of the tide and enter hostile waters, not seeing home for years as governments ignore their plight.

I didn’t see the Congress getting itself into a twist all these years over Geeta and it does cross my mind that it is pretty odd a girl from Bihar strayed across the border in the north a thousand miles away and no one knew or reported the matter at that time.

And where were her parents? They did not misplace a pin or a rubber band or their tiffin on the train or when they were touring Wagah or whatever. They lost their ten-year-old daughter. Was any police report made, was an FIR written up. Did they run from pillar to post seeking their child?

For God’s sake, you lose a child you go wild with fear. In all the write-ups sticky with gooey sentiment there is no mention of the FIR or the police report. What happened that day, there has to be a paper trail and we are not seeing it.

How many deaf, mute children gambol across the heaviest patrolled border in the world on a daily basis? Life is not a movie.

When the Pakistani authorities found her all alone and a handicapped child at that they must have passed on the information to the Indian Embassy. She was folding her hands in namaste, and touching the feet of elders so it wasn’t doing A levels to conclude she is Hindu. The matter must have been reported. Where was the Indian ambassador then? Did he not pass on details to the Indian side so that appropriate action could be taken?

It seems very cinematic that this frightened, lonely child would have a photograph of her family which has survived all these years and if it was there on Day One how difficult would it have been to find them. So we agree that several sets of parents dispatched their photographs for her to check them out. This brings up the question: how many deaf, mute kids were lost ten years ago across the border. It is not something you forget, losing a challenged ten year old, like a library book you haven’t returned.

So Geeta finally chooses one picture like it was a raffle or a police ID parade and now on meeting them she cannot recognize the family members. So we will do a DNA test. It seems pretty much on the cards they will not be her parents. More trauma. Rather than dump her in a home for individuals with special needs, if this family hugs her to their bosom seeing as how she is an adult of 24 let it be, make it the happy ending, stop exploiting the lady. The other factor that is mystifying is the secrecy that shrouds the reuniting. It’s OK for Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj and others to get snapped with her but no one seems to grasp the real story and ask the parents if this is their daughter. How many sets of parents are there? Check the birth marks, moles, facial features, after all , she was ten years, not six months old.

It is such a muted ending we are watching that the tragedy would be compounded if the genuine parents who are out there somewhere were not coming forward because do they really want a deaf, mute girl…scary thought.

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in the Column section are their own and do not reflect RiyadhVision’s point-of-view.

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