In a story reminiscent of Bollywood’s ‘‘lost and found’’ sagas, a girl from Switzerland has traversed the long journey to India for reunion with her parents after being kidnapped and abandoned more than two decades ago.Twenty-nine-year-old Shahjahan of Mariahun in UP was kidnapped in April, 1981, at the age of seven along with sister Kishwar, allegedly by their maternal uncle. While the abductors abandoned Kishwar in Varanasi from where she managed to return home, they left Shahjahan at an orphanage in Kolkata. A Swiss couple, who renamed her Shahazadi, adopted and took her with them. Later she married engineer, George Stephan, in Switzerland but nurtured the dream of meeting her real parents. Her dream was realised when with the help of the Delhi Police Crime Branch she published advertisements in several newspapers and was able to locate her parents. Her father Mohammad Rafi got in touch with police and claimed that Shahazadi was their daughter, a claim later substantiated by a DNA test.Shahazadi reached her ancestral home yesterday with her husband. Faced with language barriers, she had needed an interpreter to talk to her parents. She said that that her happiness knew no bounds at meeting her parents after 22 years. Being distressed at finding her parents living in poverty, she has decided to ensure a better life for them.
