For two long years, it was a challenge for counsellors at the Shelter for Homeless Women run by the Chennai Corporation to extract basic information from a speech and hearing impaired woman on her identity and address. Since she was illiterate, she would just remain aloof and cry whenever the scene of a moving train appeared on TV.
But for a special Aadhaar enrolment drive, the hapless woman would have probably spent the rest of her life in the shelter. Venkata Lakshmamma, 45, of Ongole in Andhra Pradesh was seen wandering aimlessly in Pallikaranai in September 2015 when some local people took pity on her and informed the police. Since then, the woman has been living in the shelter.
Early last week, the shelter authorities responded to an Aadhaar enrolment camp for women and children with disabilities. “I had a hunch that there could possibly be a way to relate the woman with some data registered with the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). When the biometrics were entered, the system rejected the application stating that the data already existed on record.
“This cue was enough to work our way forward,” said Aiswarya Rajyalaxmi, director, Dorcas Research Centre, an NGO that runs the shelter for the Chennai Corporation.
The NGO wrote to the Commissioner for Differently Abled seeking assistance to retrieve the data about the woman from the UIDAI. Ms. Lakshmamma was not the only woman whose biometrics matched with the data on Aadhaar database. There were two other women who were also hearing and speech impaired whose fingerprints reflected in the system.
First time
Arun Roy, State Commissioner for Differently Abled, said he wrote to the UIDAI authorities on the issue and they responded the same day. A special team was deployed to help the NGO to retrieve the required data. “This is the first time in the State that we are using Aadhaar data to trace the address and reunite a missing woman with her family,” Mr. Roy told The Hindu .
Soon after the data was retrieved and the address of Ms. Lakshmamma located, the shelter authorities informed the Ongole police who confirmed that there was a woman missing case reported in their jurisdiction a couple of years ago and that the identity of Lakshmamma matched with the details given by her family members.
“Within a few hours, about 15 members of Lakshmamma’s family, including her daughter and sister, came in a vehicle to the shelter. They all broke down on seeing Ms. Lakshmamma. It was an emotional moment for all of us too...the family had been searching for the woman over the last two years by all possible means,” Ms. Aiswarya said adding that the address of the other two women in the shelter was traced to Warangal (Telangana) and Erode. “We hope to restore these women to their respective families soon.”
