By Muhammad Luqman
Twenty men, including a priest and a writer, have responded to a Facebook advert seeking a match for Geeta, a deaf-and-mute girl who returned India in 2015 after spending over 15 years at an orphanage in Pakistan.
Geeta , according to Indian media, was just 7 or 8 years old when Pakistani Rangers found her sitting alone inside the Samjhauta Express at the Lahore railway station in year 2000. The local police took her to the Edhi Foundation in Karachi. She returned to India in October 2015.
A social activist here, who is involved in the search for Geetas long-lost parents, put up a post on Facebook nine days ago, seeking marriage proposals for her.
Gyanendra Purohit, the activist, today said 20 men have shown interest in marrying her and sent bia-data. Of them, 12 persons are disabled, while the rest do not have any disability, he was quoted by Indian newspapers.
One of them is a temple priest while another claims to be a writer.
Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj — who was instrumental in bringing Geeta back to India — had asked him to look for a match for the girl, Purohit had claimed earlier.
He put up a post on the Facebook page `Reunite Geeta, a deaf girl, with her family, which was originally created to search for Geetas parents, on April 10.
The advert said they were looking for a “good and smart deaf boy”, age above 25 years, for “India’s daughter Geeta”.
It also made it clear that it is Geeta who would decide on the proposals.
So far more than ten couples from different parts of India have claimed that Geeta is their long-lost daughter, but none of them could establish the claim.
