10 December,2016 01:33 PM IST | | Samiullah Khan
India-born German national, adopted when she was two, manages to trace her roots and find relatives to return for a reunion
Kataja Maria Tilbry with her relatives and members of the production house Endemol in Bandra. The 36-year-old nurse was adopted by a German couple when she was two years old
It took 34 years and concerted efforts on part of her adoptive parents and others, but finally India-born German national Kataja Maria Tilbry (36) was able to trace her roots and find out who her biological parents were.
Production house Endemol played an important part in making this happen for Tilbry, a nurse. It was only through its efforts that a nurse in Berlin traced her roots to Vasai.
Over the years
Tilbry's biological parents Fatima and John Futaro were in a relationship and Fatima got pregnant. Her relatives made the two separate as the union was inter-faith. But she gave birth to the child in 1980, who was then sent away to an orphanage when she was two months old.
In 1982, a German couple adopted the two-year-old from Mother Teresa Charity Home in Vile Parle and took her to Germany.
Sources said that Fatima later married someone else and settled in Goa. She reportedly committed suicide in 1998.
Tilbry, after a continuous search for three years with the help of the production house and a local contact, managed to get in touch with her relatives in Vasai.
The reunion
mid-day was in contact Tilbry's aunt Leena Salian and his son Sandeep for the last two months, and they finally met yesterday after Tilbry came to the city. In a Bandra five-star hotel, the three had an emotional reunion, with Tilbry expressing her happiness at meeting them after all these years, and even insisted on spending a few days with them.
"I felt very happy to meet Kataja Maria; I had never thought that I would get to see her again. We both could not understand each other's language, but we still managed to communicate through signs and gestures," said Leena.
