Best friends for decades - until a DNA test revealed they were sisters
Two Indian-born women adopted by different families in the Netherlands discovered they were biological sisters after taking DNA tests. The pair had been childhood friends who suspected a connection due to their physical similarities before losing touch for 15 years.
Why it matters
This story illustrates the growing role of consumer DNA testing in reuniting families separated by international adoption.
Image source, Reuters Image caption, Meena Geltink and Minal Tijssen met in August after a DNA test revealed they were biological sisters
Theirs is a story straight out of a Bollywood film.
Two Indian-born women in their 40s, adopted as babies by different families and raised near each other in the Netherlands, have now discovered they are biological sisters.
Meena Geltink and Minal Tijssen, born in the early 1980s, were adopted from two different orphanages in the western Indian city of Mumbai within months of their birth.
When they first met in their early teens at an event hosted by the adoption agency their parents had used, they were struck by the uncanny similarities in their appearance and mannerisms.
Meena, now 43, remembers the day clearly.
"All the adopted children were brought together to hang out and bond and have dinner."
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