Get ready for a tearjerker! We can’t help but love stories of separated family members reuniting, even after decades.

As if part of a made-for-TV drama, a pair of identical twin sisters were recently featured on Bernama news in a most sensational turn of events in their very real lives! Swapped and separated at birth, twins Ardyani Iwani and Noratirah Husin have miraculously found each other after almost two decades!

NEGLIGENT PEDIATRIC CARE

According to Bernama’s report on June 27, the criminal ‘mistake’ happened shortly after the twin girls were born at Kota Bharu Hospital in Kelantan on August 19, 2001 — a day that a third baby girl was born, as well, who also fits into the story.

From what has been gathered so far, it was pinpointed that one of the twins was swapped by a hospital staff member with the third baby girl born that same day, and left all the families in question in the dark about it.

For the following 19 years, both sets of families were still none the wiser. In fact, the family with the ‘twin’ girls — named Adryani and Adryana Iwani — simply believed that they were more fraternal as they were both clearly not identical.

The lost twin — Noratirah Husin — however, grew up with her non-biological parents in another part of Kelantan, clueless to the fact of her mistaken identity.

STRANGER THINGS

It wasn’t until the girls were their fourth year of high school when one of them started wondering if something was amiss when she attended an extracurricular motivational camp.

“At the camp, I met students from another school who said that I looked like their friend, Noratirah,” Adryani told Bernama. “I then asked them for a picture of Noratirah and they shared her Instagram account with me.”

“I told my ‘twin’ sister about it and she agreed that Noratirah and I looked the same, but when I told my mother about it, she dismissed it,” she added. “So, I just let it go and regarded our looking alike as one of those doppelganger situations.”

Somehow, in a twist of fate, both sisters finally met face-to-face for the first time in 2019 at a local education fair, and that’s when Adryani knew that their lives might change forever.

“Both of us were stunned to see our similarities. We were lost for words and only stared at each other and the incident was noticed by our friends,” Adryani recalled.

Although finally having met, the girls did not communicate until a whole year later when they finally connected on social media after discovering that they both shared the same birthday. Adryani was notified by mutual friends when she had uploaded birthday photos on Instagram, that Noratirah’s birthday also fell on the exact same day — August 19.

When the girls finally reached out to each other, lengthy chats and a host of uncanny similarities prompted them to find definitive answers through a DNA test.

“We discussed a lot of things and discovered that there are too many similarities between us to be regarded as a coincidence,” Adryani said.

“After discussing, both families agreed to do a DNA test at Universiti Sains Malaysia Hospital (HUSM) in Kubang Kerian, Kelantan to identify whether we were biologically related.”

A REUNION UNLIKE ANY OTHER

With blood samples taken from all three girls, and one parent from each family, the DNA results confirmed what the girls suspected all along.

“The results, which found [with 99.99% certainty] that Noratirah and I are twin sisters, shocked us, especially my mama, who broke down in tears,” Adryani said.

Responding to how such a grave act of negligence could happen, Ayu Haryanin – the elder biological sister of Adryani and Noratirah — told the press that her family was not informed whether the twins were identical or not at the time of their birth, leading them to make their own assumption that the girls were fraternal and simply didn’t look alike.

“Because the tags on their legs bore our mama’s name, our family never thought about it and assumed that Adryani and Adryana were non-identical twin sisters,” Ayu said.

Since the official reveal, Noratirah has relocated and moved in with her biological family and twin after both her adoptive parents (who are actually Adryana’s biological parents) had passed on. Noratirah’s adoptive mother, Rahmah Isa died in 2018, while her adopted father — Husin Omar, passed away just two months following the reveal of the DNA test results.

While the twins have found each other, the close-knit family have insisted that Adryana is still part of the family despite not being blood-related, and nothing will change that.

The girls’ family are currently seeking legal counsel in order explore their options for action against all parties responsible for this life-altering mistake.