New Age Ramayana: Missing daughter returns home to Ayodhya 14 yrs later

Mumbai: A 25-year-old woman, who went missing from Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh when she was a child and accidentally landed in Mumbai, has found her family 14 years later.

Pooja Subodh Verma, who grew up in an orphanage in adjoining Navi Mumbai, was trying to find her parents for the last few years.

In 2003, while playing at the Ayodhya railway station, she accidentally boarded a Mumbai-bound train.

After reaching the metropolis, police spotted her, and sent her to an orphanage in Nerul. She was also enrolled in a school.

In 2009, Pooja started working as a domestic help with Nitin and Sunita Gaikwad, a couple living in Nerul.

She remembered the names of her parents, Subodh and Meera, brother Alok, their house in Ayodhya near the Sarayu river and a Ram temple, and that her father owned a shop of garlands and audio cassettes, said Nitin.

With these scanty details, Nitin and local activist Girish Patil started the search for Pooja's parents in Ayodhya by contacting Uttar Pradesh Police. Through some contacts they approached Santosh Tiwari of the Anti Terrorism Squad in Lucknow.

Tiwari assigned the task of making inquiries to his men. Police looked for men who dealt in garlands and cassettes, and also went through voters' lists in Ayodhya and Faizabad.

As the search operation was on, Pooja herself decided to visit Ayodhya earlier this month. On reaching Ayodhya on November 5, she started searching the areas along the banks of the Sarayu, and after a few hours, managed to locate her house at Naya Ghat and find her family.

A jubilant Pooja then called Gaikwad and Patil, informing that she had found her parents.

"We were trying our best to locate Pooja's family members... One day I got a call from Pooja about her reunion with her parents and also spoke to her father. We are happy to hear that she has safely reached her home," Tiwari said.

"This is the happiest moment of my life. I got my daughter back. I don't want anything from the almighty now," Pooja's father Subodh said.

"We searched for her for weeks after she went missing. As the river is close to our house, some people thought she drowned and then we stopped the search," said one of Pooja's kin.