Lost in Vasai 31 yrs ago, sisters found in Sweden
Lost in Vasai 31 yrs ago, sisters found in Sweden
The girls who, as minors, were separated from their family, were later adopted and taken abroad
Ram Parmar
Posted On Wednesday, February 23, 2011 at 06:38:20 AM
Thirty-one years after her daughters - five-year-old Ghulab and three-year-old Laxmi went missing in Vasai - Jamnibai Dhangad, a daily wage labourer, still lives in the hope of meeting them again.
Thanks to the efforts of a string of do-gooders over the last three decades, the chances of that happening are closer than anyone would’ve imagined, but still some way from being a happy ending.
The daughters have been traced to Sweden, and travelled to India a couple of years ago hoping to reconnect with their biological mother, but after that failed attempt, their communication has been restricted to an exchange of photographs and a letter the daughters have now written her.
When the girls went missing, Jamnibai filed a complaint with Vasai Police Station. Days passed by and there was no trace of the girls, forcing Dhangad to approach activist Peter D’Souza, who worked with Catholic Co-operative Bank in Vasai.
Another activist, Marcus Dabre, joined the search, and found out from the Nana Chowk Police Station in Grant Road that the two girls were found by cops and sent to the Umerkhadi Children’s Home. That was in November 1980.
When the children’s home authorities couldn’t help, the family filed a petition in the Bombay High Court.
(From left) Anna and Sophia wrote to their mother Jamnibai Dhangad in 2008. They were traced thanks to the efforts of activist Marcus Dabre among others
Three years later, in 1983, the HC was told that two girls who matched Ghulab and Laxmi’s age and description were registered at a shelter home in the city known to give up children for adoption to foreign nationals.
Dabre said, “The court contacted the shelter home’s founder Mridula Rao, who confirmed the two girls were adopted by Ericcson and Preet, a couple from Sweden. However, Rao only had basic details of the couple and that didn’t help.”
The activists approached Cardinal Simon Pimenta, who wrote to all churches in Sweden requesting details of the two girls.
The story was published in local newspapers in 1985, following which a photographer, Rafique Elyas, contacted the family. It took another two years before Elyas met the family in 1988.
Gradually, Dhangad and the activists started coming to terms with the possibility of never finding the girls. But in 2008, Dabre says, they received an email from the Swedish Consulate confirming the women’s address.
“The girls’ pictures were shown to Jamnibai, who initially went numb, and later cried hysterically.”
Jamnibai’s search may have ended, but her ordeal has not, as she is yet to meet her daughters because of financial constraints. What she does know is Ghulab is now known as Anna, while Laxmi was renamed Sofia by her adopted parents.
Ghulab is a nurse and has a three-year-old son Casper while Laxmi works in a hotel and is the mother of two daughters, Rebecca, 7, and 10-year-old Clara. They communicated with Dhangad but she was unable to read the letter written in English.
Dhangad said, “The only aim in my life is to meet my daughters. I am so happy to learn they are well-settled. I’m told their respective husbands take good care of them.
Hopefully before I die, I will be able to meet them, and my grandchildren.” Dabre said, “Dhangad has a passport and hopefully one day, she will fly out to Sweden to meet her daughters.”
Kaisa Hammar from Goteborg, who played a huge role in tracing the women, said she was in talks with them. “I am so happy that Anna and Sofia have found their biological family again. A day will come, hopefully, when a grand reunion will happen.”
Elyas, who has followed the case closely, prefers to wait for that day rather than celebrate prematurely. “On the one hand, we have a tribal woman with an organic hunger to meet her daughters.
On the other, we have the two daughters, who have grown up in Sweden as Swedish citizens, and are well settled in life. For them, making the effort to meet their mother is a much bigger journey than any of us can imagine.”