VOI World/ Desk
Meena Geltink and Minal Tijssen, two women born in India and adopted separately by Dutch families, have discovered nearly four decades later that they are biological sisters – after having already met and become friends as teenagers.
Both women were left as infants at orphanages in India and grew up in the Netherlands, about 130 kilometres apart. Neither knew that she had a biological sister.
Their paths crossed in 1996 at a gathering for adopted children. The two teenagers immediately felt a strong connection, while friends noticed how much they looked alike. They exchanged addresses and stayed in touch, even jokingly referring to each other as “sis”. They eventually lost contact for about 15 years.
The connection resurfaced in April this year when Tijssen, now 44 and living in France with her partner and two sons, received the results of a MyHeritage DNA test. The result showed a 100% sibling match with Geltink, now 43 and a mother of three.
Tijssen initially struggled to believe the result. She later found Geltink on social media and recognised her from photographs, realising that the woman identified as her sister was the same girl she had met as a teenager three decades earlier.
The discovery has brought an emotional new chapter for both women. They reunited in the Netherlands on Tuesday, where their meeting was marked by tears, laughter, hugs and their first photograph together as sisters. Since discovering their relationship, they have been spending hours talking and messaging each other every day.
Both women said they had grown up in loving adoptive families but had carried questions about their biological origins. For Geltink, the discovery filled what she described as a long-standing sense of absence.
The story is also an unusual example of how consumer DNA testing can uncover family connections decades after adoption, linking two people who had unknowingly crossed paths long before they discovered they shared the same biological family.
