2 min readJammuMar 21, 2026 07:20 AM IST
A 75-year-old woman, who had been missing for the past 11 years, was finally reunited with her family in Uttar Pradesh by the Jammu and Kashmir Police.
The woman, identified as Leelawati, is from Dwaj village in Uttar Pradesh. According to police, she is mentally unwell and reached the border district of Poonch in Jammu and Kashmir from Uttar Pradesh by train and other modes of transport over a period of time. Since then, she had been wandering in Surankote.
However, when she reached Hari Marhot village on the higher reaches of Surankote tehsil early this month, local residents informed police about her.
Surankote SHO Abid Bukhari, with the help of a police team, went to the spot and brought the woman to the police station, and provided her with clothes. However, she was unable to tell them anything about her family.
After persistent efforts, she finally uttered two words, “Dwaj” and “Buddu”, when asked about her home, police said.
The SHO Googled these names and found that there were two places called Dwaj, one in Rajasthan and the other in Uttar Pradesh. To identify which Dwaj she was referring to, Abid started taking the names of places around the two Dwajs mentioned in the maps. She recognised the names of a few of them that were in Uttar Pradesh, helping police zero in on her hometown, officers said.
Eventually, the J&K Police contacted its counterpart in Uttar Pradesh for help in locating her family. When the latter traced her family, “Buddu” turned out to be the name of her son.
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When the family members learned about her whereabouts, they arrived in Surankote. After completing the legal formalities, the woman was handed over to her family, police said.
