44-year-old women discovered they are sisters — after years of feeling an "inexplicable connection"
A moving end to decades of wondering: Mina and Minal were abandoned as infants in India, adopted by different families in the Netherlands, met by chance as teenagers, and then lost touch. A recent genetic test they conducted reunited them and proved what the heart had always felt.
In a moving meeting in the Netherlands, which included tears and hugs, two 44-year-old women reunited this week after discovering they are biological sisters. For many long years, they felt an inexplicable connection to one another, and now they have received absolute scientific confirmation of this.
The emotional moment occurred when Mina Galtink met her sister Minal Thyssen and told her:
"When I see you, it feels like home."
The two hurried to document the moment in a first joint selfie as officially recognized sisters.
The amazing story of the two began 44 years ago. Both were abandoned as infants in separate orphanages in India and were adopted by different Dutch families. Without birth records or details about relatives, no one knew about the connection between them, and they grew up about 160 kilometers apart from each other.
A separation that lasted 15 years
Their paths first crossed in 1996, during a dedicated meeting for children adopted from India. They immediately became close friends and even used to call each other "sister" in letters they exchanged in their youth, according to a report by the BBC. The striking physical resemblance between them, alongside the strong sense of familiarity, caused them to wonder about the deep bond between them. However, despite the strong feelings, the connection between them was severed for 15 years.
The breakthrough came thanks to modern technology. A few years ago, Galtink performed a DNA test in the hope of locating relatives, but no matches were found for her. Recently, Thyssen, who currently lives in France, also decided to send a DNA sample to the database.
The result received in April was unequivocal: the system identified a 100% match and determined that the two are biological sisters. The test put an end to decades of wondering, and now the two spend hours every day in phone conversations, catching up on a lifetime of gaps.
