A 15-year-old tribal girl from Gumla, a trafficking survivor, was reunited with her family on Wednesday after three-and-half years — thanks to her mother’s dogged determination.

The illiterate tribal woman, from Kurkupat village under Gurdari police station of Gumla, around 165km west of Ranchi, went on her own to Delhi with nothing but a phone number, stayed in the city for three months and ensured that her daughter was rescued.

The girl was brought to Ranchi on Tuesday by officials of the anti-human trafficking unit of Ranchi police following instructions of chief minister Hemant Soren, and sent to Gumla a day later.

A Gumla policeman said the girl was trafficked in August 2016 by her paternal aunt, Mini Mundain.

The girl was first taken to Delhi and made to work at a house in Rohtak in Haryana as a domestic help where she was neither allowed to contact her family nor given money for her work.

“She was rescued by the Delhi Commission for Women on March 1,” the policeman said. “We brought her back to Ranchi on March 10. Later on, she was produced before the Ranchi district child welfare committee where her statement was recorded. On Wednesday evening, she was handed over to the Gumla police and finally sent to her family.”

The alleged trafficker, Mini, is absconding.

Delhi Commission for Women chairperson Swati Maliwal had tweeted about the girl’s rescue and tagged chief minister Hemant Soren’s handle. Hemant immediately ordered the district police to bring the minor girl back to Jharkhand.

The biggest chunk of the credit for the girl coming back home goes to her mother, the police admitted.

The woman initially did not realise her daughter had been trafficked because she trusted her relative who told her the girl would have a “comfortable life in Delhi”. She realised that her daughter had been trafficked when she could make no contact with her child. The relative, under various pretexts, refused to disclose the girl’s whereabouts.

“Whenever the mother asked about the daughter, she was handed small sums of money, which amounted to Rs 23,000 in three-and-half years,” the Gumla policeman said. “Finally, about three months ago, the mother boarded a train to Delhi to search for her daughter. She only had one piece of information, Mini’s phone number.”

In Delhi, the mother stayed with some relatives who are migrant labourers there. One of the women was associated with a self-help group. She took the mother to the group where members put her in touch with the Delhi Commission for Women. Commission members called up Mini and asked her to take the mother to the girl or face possible arrest.

Meanwhile, the mother came back to Gumla and filed an FIR on March 4 against Mini.

The policeman said that left with no choice, Mini took the mother to meet her daughter and the girl’s Rohtak employers let her go.

Roopa Kumari, chairperson of the Ranchi child welfare committee, said big city dreams had been the girl’s undoing.

“The girl said her aunt kept telling her about a good life in a big city. Her mother always refused to allow the girl to go, but one day the girl decided to leave with her aunt. Now she is back home and wants to go to school,” Roopa said.

Jharkhand tops human trafficking cases in India, followed by Maharashtra, Assam, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.