Tamil Nadu - Chennai 
Woman restored to family after 16 years
CHENNAI: Sixteen years after she was separated from her family in Guntur, Jaya Bharathi was reunited with them last week in the city.
“It is a miracle that she is back home,” said S.Vidyaakar, founder secretary of Udhavum Karangal, the organisation that provided her shelter and care for the last decade.
He first saw Jaya Bharathi wandering along a highway near Salem as a mentally disturbed young woman in 1997. When he got in touch with the local panchayat, he was told that there were a few others like her in the area.
They seemed to have been severely abused and wandered around semi-dressed. The women were picked up in the Udhavum Karangal vehicle and brought to Chennai, to the organisation’s home for the destitute.
One of them is hearing and speech-impaired and another, an elderly North Indian woman, has died. Jaya Bharathi responded well to psychiatric treatment.
Finally in a safe and nurturing environment after years of abuse and neglect, she began to sketchily recall her past, he said.
She had been separated from her family at the age of 18 in a temple fair at a village near Guntur in 1991.
The young girl got lost in the crowd and was unable to find her way back home.
She was sexually abused by many. She lost her sanity and lived on the roads as a destitute for six years, he said.
The address she remembered was not helpful as the family seemed to have shifted elsewhere.
After she was found by Mr. Vidyaakar in 1997, the next turning point was a television documentary that ETV produced recently with a focus on Udhavum Karangal. Various Telugu-speaking people at the home were featured.
An IT professional in the city watched the show and asked her maid, who was from Guntur, to inquire about Jaya Bharathi’s family.
The maid’s enquiries bore fruit and her married siblings got in touch. Her father is no more. Her brothers and sisters are married.
“This is a poor family but they have been glad to take her back. We have provided them with her psychiatric records. We will stay in touch,” said Mr. Vidyaakar.