Geeta flies to Delhi to reunite with long-lost family

KARACHI (AFP) - A young deaf and mute Indian girl who strayed into Pakistan more than 10 years ago flew to Delhi Monday to be reunited with the people she believes are her family, the charity caring for her said.

Known only as Geeta, she was unable to identify herself or say where she came from when she wandered over one of the world s most militarised borders from neighbouring India.

Now believed to be aged in her early 20s, she has remained in Pakistan under the care of the country s largest welfare organisation, the Edhi Foundation, living in a shelter in the port city of Karachi.

Also read: Silencing doubts, Geeta prepares to go home on October 26

"We are happy that finally she is going home but she will visit Pakistan now and then," Faisal Edhi, son of the foundation s founder Abdul Sattar Edhi, told media outside the charity s office in downtown Karachi.

Bilquis Edhi and her grandchildren, Saba, Hamzaand Saad Edhi, are accompanying Geeta to New Delhi.

After repeated false leads in the effort to find her family, Geeta s story received a publicity boost in August when a Bollywood film with a similar story became a smash hit.

The Indian government vowed to bring her home, and Geeta eventually identified an unnamed family from Bihar state as being her relatives.

She will undergo DNA testing in India before being handed over to the family, Bilqees Edhi, wife of the organisation s founder said.