A woman has been reunited with her long-lost brother after 60 years and discovered he’s one of the richest men in the world. Ida Wilde bad...
A woman has been reunited with her long-lost brother after 60 years and discovered he’s one of the richest men in the world. Ida Wilde bade a tearful farewell to Asgar Patel on a Glasgow railway platform 60 years ago.
Asgar, who her family had given refuge to, during the Partition of Indian troubles, had built up one of the largest logistic companies in India – and in turn become one of the world’s richest men.
His fortune placed him at No.45 on Forbes’ top 100 Indian business owners list in 2017 – and now he was heading to Irvine to see the adopted sister he had never forgotten.
Great-gran Ida, 83, told the Daily Record : “I hadn’t seen Asgar in so long. It turns out he’d spent years searching for his adopted Scottish family but we moved out of Glasgow and he couldn’t find us.
Then out of the blue I got a message on Facebook from Asgar and it was just lovely to hear from him again. I couldn’t believe he had spotted my photograph after all these years – it was a miracle really.
I’d said goodbye to a wee boy and now he was returning a hugely successful multi-millionaire. It was surreal.”
Back in 1947, Ida was a child growing up in the west end of Glasgow. At the stroke of midnight on August 15 that year, British rule was ended in India after a long struggle and the territory separated into two new countries, India and Pakistan.
Millions of people were forced to leave their homes to move to the other state in the largest mass migration in human history, with the majority of Hindus staying in India and a host of Muslims moving to Pakistan.
After six decades Asgar, now 78, spotted a picture of Ida holding a bunch of flowers at a family wedding which had been posted on Facebook. He travelled to Irvine in August to visit Ida at her home and she says seeing him again was a special and emotional moment.
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