Missing girl found after nine years recounts ordeal

After nine long years, 16-year-old Pooja Gaud is finally able to rest her head on her mother's lap. Pooja went missing on 22 January 2013 when she was seven years old.

She says she was picked up from outside her school in Mumbai city in the western Indian state of Maharashtra by a couple who lured her with an ice-cream.

On 4 August, she was found in what is being described as "a miraculous escape". Her mother, Poonam Gaud, says she is over the moon with happiness.

"I had given up hope of ever finding my daughter. But the gods have been kind to me," she says.

Police have alleged that the child was kidnapped by Harry D'Souza and his wife, Soni D'Souza, because the couple didn't have a child of their own. They have arrested Mr D'Souza.

Before she went missing, Pooja lived with her two brothers and parents in a small house in a suburban slum area.

On the day she went missing, she had left for school with her elder brother, but the two had a fight and her brother went into the school leaving her behind as he was running late. That's when the couple allegedly took her away, promising to buy her an ice-cream.

Pooja says that the couple initially took her to Goa and then Karnataka, states in western and southern India, and would threaten to hurt her if she cried or drew attention to herself.

She says she was allowed to attend school for a short while, but after the couple had a child of their own, she was pulled out of school and they all shifted to Mumbai.

Pooja says the abuse got worse after the baby was born.

"They would beat me with a belt, kick me, punch me. One time they beat me with a rolling pin so badly that my back began to bleed. I was also made to do chores at home and work in 12 to 24 hour-long jobs outside."

The house where D'Souza's lived was quite close to her family's - but, she says, she was unfamiliar with the roads, was always watched and had no money or phone, and she couldn't reach out for help or try to find her way home.