more-in The day the Supreme Court upheld the validity of Aadhaar, the much-debated identity card helped reunite a 26-year-old woman and her newborn with their family. More than seven months after Nisha was found wandering on East Coast Road in Chennai, members of different NGOs and Chennai Corporation worked in unison and traced her family to Uttar Pradesh with the help of her Aadhaar details. It was on February 22 that the Neelankarai police rescued her from the road and handed her to the Shelter for Urban Homeless Women funded by the Chennai Corporation at Panaiyur. “We found that she was two months pregnant during a routine medical check-up after she was handed over to us. She was found to be mildly depressed. She refused to say a word and stayed inside a room. However, we continued to take her for psychiatric counselling,” said I. Rita Iyyappan, programme director of Little Hearts, an NGO that runs the shelter. It was part of the procedure to obtain government identity cards, such as Aadhaar and Electors Photo Identity Card, for such persons, Asha Parek Nanthini, city-level coordinator for Shelter for Urban Homeless, pointed out. “However, when we tried to enrol her for Aadhaar, it kept rejecting. So, we started to look for details if she had already enrolled for Aadhaar,” she said. Ms. Iyyappan approached Aiswarya Rao, a paediatrician, for help. “We learned that she had earlier reunited a person using Aadhaar card details. On September 9, we went to the Aadhaar centre at Sholinganallur and managed to get her Aadhaar details. We then approached Manish Kumar, a social worker who is fluent in Hindi. He traced the address in Uttar Pradesh within two hours after getting the details,” she said. Boy baby By then, Nisha went into labour and was admitted to the Institute of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and Government Hospital for Women and Children, Egmore. “We informed her family and they made a video call on September 10. It was then that her husband told us that she was pregnant when she went missing from home,” she said. The next day, she was delivered of a boy. A surprise awaited all. “We were worried how she would take care of the baby. Initially, she did not accept that she was pregnant. But on seeing the baby, we began to see drastic changes in her. She was happy. In fact, she started to speak and asked about her husband,” she said. Her husband along with the ‘sarpanch’ arrived in Chennai on Wednesday. After legal verification, the family was reunited in the presence of P. Madhusudhan Reddy, deputy commissioner (health), Greater Chennai Corporation on Thursday. The family left for Uttar Pradesh by train.

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