Missing Girl Found After 9 Years: "A Miraculous Escape"
A missing girl, cruelly separated from her mother for nine impossibly long years, is miraculously home at last!
As reported by the BBC News Marathi, Pooja Gaud, now sixteen, was kidnapped on January 22, 2013, when she was just seven years old.
Harry D’Souza and his wife, Soni D’Souza, lured her with ice cream outside her school in Mumbai city in the western Indian state of Maharashtra.
This past August, she was found following a “miraculous escape,” and her mother, Poonam Gaud, could not be happier.
According to police who have arrested Mr. D’Souza, Pooja was taken because the D’Souza’s wanted a child of their own.
The couple moved around India with Pooja and initially placed her in school. But after they finally had a child of their own, they removed her from school. That is when they moved to Mumbai and the abuse got worse.
“They would beat me with a belt, kick me, punch me. One time they beat me with a rolling pin so badly that my back began to bleed. I was also made to do chores at home and work in 12 to 24 hour-long jobs outside,” Pooja said.
Although she was living not far from her birth family which included her parents and two brothers, Pooja didn’t know her way home and had no access to ways to contact her parents.
One day, she used her kidnappers’ cell phone while they slept and typed her name into YouTube. She gained much information about her family but it still took her seven months to muster the courage to ask the babysitter to assist her.
MSN reports that the sitter helped Pooja call one of the numbers listed to report information about her whereabouts. The police got involved and Pooja was reunited with her family.
“I told the police everything. I even told them where my kidnappers lived,” Pooja said.
Her mother knew it was her missing girl after finding the birthmark only she knew Pooja had. “All my doubts were immediately gone. I knew I had found my daughter,” Poonam said, overcome with emotion.
Sadly, Pooja’s father died recently of cancer but Pooja’s return has brought joy and comfort to both her mother and their neighbors. Everyone has been dropping by to see the miracle child who once was lost but now is found.
Pooja will be processing her trauma for a long time but now she can do it while enjoying the love of her family and the community that is happier now that this lost child is safe at last.
