Geeta’s Pakistan caretaker gets Teresa award

Bilquis Bano, the Pakistani caretaker of Geeta, the girl who was repatriated to India, was on Sunday awarded the Mother Teresa Memorial International Award 2015 for social justice.

The Harmony Foundation Board unanimously decided to honour Karachi-based Bilquis Bano of Edhi Foundation. Geeta, who came back to the country recently, had strayed across the border aboard the Samjhauta Express in 2003 and had ended up in Lahore where the Pakistan Rangers found her.

“There are a few politicians and a few anti-social elements in India and Pakistan who are not allowing both the countries to come together,” Bilquis Bano told this this newspaper. “I was asked by our late PM Benazir Bhutto, to join politics and do the noble cause of bringing people together, but politics is evil and I told her that in Pakistan if one needs to do noble work politics is not the correct path. Achche kaam karne waalo ko Pakistan mein saza-e-maut milti hai,” she said.

Bano said, “Geeta is 22 years old now. She was an 11-year-old child when she was brought to me... Geeta did not speak or listen to anything, but she only responded to temple bells, and that is when I came to know that she could be from India.”