My friends thought I’d dyed my hair after seeing a TikTok video – it turned out to be my secret twin

• Twins Ano Sartania and Tako Khvitia, both 21, were separated at birth
• It was reported the sisters were sold into an illegal adoption ring
• It wasn’t until their late teens that they were reunited – thanks to a TikTok post 

A pair of young women who grew up separately discovered they were twins thanks to TikTok after a friend spotted one of them in a post and assumed it was the sister she knew herself, just with different hair.

Twins Ano Sartania and Tako Khvitia, now 21, were born in Kirtski, Georgia, on June 20, 2002 – but neither had any idea that the other existed until they were 19 years old, Italian newspaper la Repubblica reported.

It turned out the pair had reportedly fallen victim, shortly after birth, to an adoption ring peddling babies to wealthy families, that for decades had run rampant across the country with a population of under four million people.

But how did Ano and Tako get separated in the first place? 

Twins Ano Sartania and Tako Khvitia, both 21, were born in Kirtski, Georgia, on June 20, 2002 – but neither had any idea that the other existed until their late teens

They were reunited as adults after Ano’s friend spotted her doppelganger in a TikTok – at first assuming it was Ano

It was reported the twins’ biological mother, Aza Shoni, had gone into a coma for a few days after giving birth to the healthy baby girls. 

When she woke up, she was told they’d died. 

However, their father, Gocha Gakharia, believing incorrectly that the twins weren’t biologically his, had in fact sold them to a black-market operation that would eventually re-home them with two separate families: Ano in the capital of Tbilisi, and Tako in the small town of Zugdidi, near the Black Sea coastline, the outlet reported.

Growing up, the two both gravitated toward dancing and, according to la Repubblica, when Ano participated in a dance competition at age 11, someone in attendance brought up the resemblance. 

But it wasn’t until both were in their late teens that they reconnected after a friend of Ano’s sent her a TikTok video with another woman who was a dead-ringer for Ano, except for her blue hair.

While the friend had assumed that Ano had actually dyed her hair blue, this of course wasn’t the case – and upon realizing this, Ano set about searching for her doppelganger. 

She eventually came upon the Georgian Facebook group ‘Vedzeb’ (which roughly translates to ‘I’m looking for’), which boasts more than 230,000 members.

Many share near-identical tales about being separated from their biological parents at birth under murky circumstances – or, arguably even more horrifyingly, having had seemingly healthy newborns taken away from them in the hospital, only to later hear from staff that their baby had died.

Rather cinematically, the twin sisters met each other as adults for the first time at a metro station in Tbilisi

First Germany fit check 🤓

It turns out that, between the 1950s and early 2000s, it’s estimated that well over 100,000 babies born in Georgia were illegally taken from their birth parents and sold to relatively wealthy families for thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars. 

The adoptive families, meanwhile, were fed made-up stories that the children had been given up by their birth parents willingly, or were otherwise orphaned.

It’s through this Facebook group that Ano and Tako ultimately found each other.

Like a scene straight out of a movie, they met as adults for the first time in a metro station in Tbilisi.

‘I always had this feeling that someone was following me everywhere I went, every day I had the same dream of a little girl, dressed in black, asking me questions about my daily routine,’ Ano told the publication of finally reuniting with her twin sister.

The pair also eventually learned about a brother and sister – as well as the whereabouts of their mother, who’d since moved to Germany. 

As for their father? After the twins reunited – and further learned about their still-living immediate family members –  DNA results confirmed the twins were his.

According to Ano, he now wants a relationship with them. ‘But it will never happen,’ she told la Repubblica.

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