Indian police are trying to piece together the story of a Russian woman who was found living in a cave in the state of Karnataka with her two small daughters.

Nina Kutina was rescued on July 9 by officers who were on routine patrol near the Ramteertha Hills in the Gokarna forest, which borders the tourist haven of Goa.

Authorities say the 40-year-old woman and her daughters, aged six and five, do not have valid documents to stay in India. The three have been housed in a foreign national detention center near Bangalore, the state capital, and will be deported soon. Kutina has defended her lifestyle in two video interviews with the Indian news agency ANI, saying she and her daughters were happy living in the cave and that “nature brings good health.” But even a week after their discovery, it remains unclear how the woman and her daughters ended up in a forest teeming with snakes and wild animals, how long they had been living there, and who they really are. How police found them: Kutina said: “The area is very popular with tourists, especially foreigners. But there are a lot of snakes and it’s prone to landslides, especially during the rainy season. To ensure the safety of tourists, we started patrolling the forests last year,” M. Narayana, superintendent of police for the Uttara Kannada district, told the BBC.

A second police officer, whose name cannot be revealed and who was part of the patrol that stumbled upon the cave, said they went down a steep hill to investigate when they saw brightly colored clothes lying outside.

As they approached the cave, the entrance to which had been covered with saris, “a little blonde girl ran out.” When the startled police followed her into the cave, they found Nina Kutina and the other girl.

Their belongings were few:Plastic mats, clothes, packets of instant noodles, and some other food items. The cave was leaking.

Videos shot by police at the cave, seen by the BBC, show the children dressed in colorful Indian costumes, smiling at the camera.

"The woman and her daughters seemed quite comfortable there," Narayana said. “It took us a while to convince her it was dangerous to live there,” he added.

Police said that when they told her the cave was unsafe because of the presence of snakes and wild animals in the forest, she replied: “Snakes and other animals are our friends. Humans are dangerous.”

Kutina and her daughters were taken to a hospital for examination after their rescue and were found to be in good health.

Who is Nina Kutina?

An official from the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO) confirmed to the BBC that Kutina is Russian and will be repatriated once the formalities are completed.

According to the official, they have already contacted the Russian consulate in Chennai. The BBC contacted the Russian embassy in New Delhi but has not yet received a response.

In video interviews with Indian news agencies ANI and PTI, Kutina said she was born in Russia but has not lived there for 15 years and has traveled to “many countries: Costa Rica, Malaysia, Bali, Thailand, Nepal, Ukraine.”

In her interviews with both agencies, Kutina said she has four children between the ages of 20 and 5. Of her eldest son, she said he died in a car accident in Goa last year.

Authorities say her now second-born son is 11 years old and is in Russia.

On Tuesday night, the FRRO said it had located the girls' father, Dror Goldstein, and that he was an Israeli businessman.

Officials with the agency said Goldstein was in India at the time and that they met with him to try to convince him to pay for the repatriation of Kutina and her daughters.

On Wednesday, Goldstein told India's NDTV that Kutina had left Goa without informing him and that he had filed a missing person report with local police.

She said she wants joint custody of her daughters and would do everything she could to prevent the Indian government from sending them to Russia.

When did she arrive in Gokarna Forest?

It is unclear how and when Kutina and her daughters arrived in Gokarna Forest in Karnataka state.

Police said she told them they had been living in the cave for a week,and that she had bought some vegetables and other food items, including a popular brand of instant noodles, from a local shop a week ago.

According to the police, Kutina told them that she had come to Karnataka from Goa, where she had also lived in a cave. And she added that one of her daughters was born there.

In her interview with PTI on Wednesday, the woman complained about the detention center where she and her daughters are housed, saying that “it is like a prison.”

“We were living in a very good place. But now we can’t be alone. We can’t go out. It is very dirty here and there is not enough food,” she added.

It is not clear when or how Kutina came to India.

Police said she told them she had lost her passport, but they found an expired passport among her belongings indicating that she had come to India with a business visa valid from October 18, 2016, to April 17, 2017.

But she overstayed her welcome, was detained a year later, and was issued an "exit permit" by the FRRO office in Goa to leave the country. According to the immigration stamps in her passport, she entered Nepal on April 19, 2018, and left three months later.

It is not clear where she went next, but Kutina told ANI that she had “traveled to at least 20 countries,” at least “four of them since she left India in 2018.”

It is also not clear when she returned to India, though some reports indicate that she did so in February 2020.

She told PTI, another news agency, that she returned out of love for the country.

Kutina admitted that her visa It had expired a few months ago. “We don’t have a valid visa, ours expired,” she said, adding that she missed the window because she was grieving for her deceased son and couldn’t think of anything else.

Why was she living in a cave?

After an image of Panduranga Vittala, a form of the Hindu god Krishna, was found in the cave where she lived, it was said that she had gone there for meditation and spiritual reasons.

But in her interview with ANI, she denied that version. “It’s not about anything spiritual. We just like nature because it makes us healthy… It’s very healthy, it’s not like living in a house.”

She added that she had “a lot of experience living in nature, in the jungle” and insisted that her daughters were happy and healthy there. The cave she had chosen was “very big and beautiful” and “very close to a village,” so she could buy food and other necessary things.

“We weren’t dying, and I didn’t take my daughters to the jungle to die. They were very happy, swimming in the waterfall,They had a really nice place to sleep, lots of art classes, we made things with clay, we painted, we ate well, I cooked really well and the food was tasty,” she told ANI. Kutina also dismissed suggestions that living in the forest put her daughters at risk. “The whole time we lived there, yes, we did see a few snakes,” she said, but added that it was similar to people saying they find snakes in their homes, kitchens or bathrooms. Click here to read more stories from BBC News. Sign up here for our new newsletter to receive a selection of our best content every Friday. week.

You can also follow us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, X, Facebook, and our WhatsApp channel.

And remember, you can receive notifications in our app. Download the latest version and activate them.