“I had lost my hope that she was alive,” said Sabitra’s mother Bhagawati. “God helped her (Sabitra) return,” she said.

Sabitra, who went out of contact soon after she left for India in search of employment opportunity, was handed over to her family in the presence of police on Thursday.

A woman, who identified her as Raj Kumari, lured and transported Sabitra to India on the pretext of foreign employment and after spending some days in Delhi, she was sent to Saudi Arabia. “I did not pay any money for the due process beforehand as I did not have money then. The agents managed all things on condition that I should pay them after earning money abroad,” she said.

Sharing her predicament she had undergone while working as a domestic help in Saudi Arabia, Sabitra said she was tortured by her employer time and again, prevented from contacting her family and confined within the four walls of the house.

It was only on September 10, 2012 when her employer sent her back to Nepal after finding it that she was suffering from intense mental illness. Police came to her rescue when she was found abandoned in the International Airport in Kathmandu. And she was later handed over to Maiti Nepal. She was then sent to the Maiti Nepal’s eastern regional office, where she stayed six months for treatment of her mental illness.