The saga of the Indian girl who crossed the border

Wouldn’t it be simpler for coast guards to just turn back fishing boats in the direction from which they came?

Last week, the papers and news channels carried the heartrending human interest story of the deaf and mute Indian girl who had inadvertently strayed across India’s western border into Pakistan when she was a child. This was in 2004. Apparently, she was spotted by Punjab Rangers who, on discovering that she was deaf and mute, sent her to an Edhi centre in Lahore after which she landed in another Edhi centre in Kharadar, Karachi. It was here that the young girl started a completely new life. Bilquis Edhi, wife of the caring and compassionate Maulana Edhi, and also a highly respected social activist, took a special interest in the girl. She was given a room to herself and made to feel at home like the other unfortunate girls who had landed in the home for a variety of reasons. The girl couldn’t speak or hear. But she could still write… in Hindi. She wrote that her parents called her Guddi, which had a distinct Punjabi ring to it. Thinking she might be a Muslim, she was first named Fatima and then, after watching certain mannerisms and characteristics was given the name Geeta and her room was studded with posters of Hindu deities.

Ansar Burney, the human-rights activist in Pakistan, stated that he had been trying for three years to locate the girl’s family and the village in which she lived. But he hadn’t been very successful. And then, a story suddenly appeared in The Express Tribune, followed by other sections of the press and Sushma Swaraj, external affairs minister of India, got into the act. Would the Indian High Commissioner, Mr TCA Raghavan, accompanied by his wife, fly down to Karachi and meet young Geeta and assure her that everything would be done to see that she would be restored to her parents? Mr Raghavan did what was required, showered the girl with gifts and gave her an assurance that he would do everything in his power to find her family. Somewhere in between the flashes of communication, Bilquis Edhi had said that if Geeta was not restored to her parents, she would spend the rest of her life in a state of depression.



The Indian film industry also did its bit, albeit unwittingly, to alert the public to Geeta’s story. A film made by the Indian hero of pulp fiction, Salman Khan, who takes off his shirt at least once in every movie, had made a film called Bajrangi Bhaijan, about a Pakistani girl who has been caught at Jalandhar Railway Station without a passport. Sounds familiar? Of course it does and anybody who feels for those poor fishermen who stray into each other’s territorial waters, get arrested, are tried and incarcerated, sample each other’s biryani and are finally released ‘as a gesture of goodwill’, is another example of the ridiculous lengths to which two wholly immature governments go to, to indulge in a ritual which has no purpose whatsoever except to score a point or two.

Wouldn’t it be simpler for the coast guards to just turn back the fishing boats in the direction from which they came with a warning? It would save the time of the courts, some of which are still grappling with 40-year-old cases? This is a great moment for the cabinet in Punjab to forget about cleaning the buses that have gotten stuck in the floods and fork up some cash and help in the search to enable a simple Indian girl find her parents in east Punjab. It would carry a hell of a lot more goodwill than exchanging sweetmeats across the Line of Control.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 9^th, 2015.

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