“Our peaceful life in the cave has ended"
Police in Karnataka have found a Russian woman and her two young daughters living in a remote cave near a popular coastal hill site.
Nina Kutina and her daughters, aged six and four, were discovered on July 9 during a police patrol of Ramatirtha Hill, a tourist destination in southern India.
Police officer Sridhar SR said: “They had been living in the cave for more than a week.”
Kutina and her daughters have now been moved to a nearby detention centre for foreigners staying illegally in India.
Authorities confirmed she had overstayed her visa and are preparing for her repatriation to Russia.
She said she was born in Russia but has not lived there for 15 years. Kutina travelled to “a lot of countries, Costa Rica, Malaysia, Bali, Thailand, Nepal, Ukraine”.
Kutina reportedly spent her time in the cave meditating by candlelight. Police said she told officers she was “interested in staying in the forest and worshipping God”.
Sridhar added: “It is nothing but her love for adventure that brought her here.”
He said Kutina had been working as a Russian language tutor in Goa before arriving in Karnataka.
Photographs released by police show Kutina standing in front of makeshift curtains made from red saris that covered the cave’s entrance. Inside, pictures of Hindu deities adorned the stone walls.
In a message sent to friends after her discovery, Kutina reportedly wrote:
“Our peaceful life in the cave has ended, our cave home destroyed.”
She insisted her daughters were well cared for and enjoyed their time in the jungle.
The Russian woman said:
“We were not dying, and I did not bring my children, my daughters, to die in jungle.”
“They were very happy, they swam in the waterfall, they had a very good place for sleeping, a lot of lessons in art making, we made from clay, we painted, we ate good, I was cooking very good and tasty food.”
Kutina also claimed the cave was “very big and beautiful” and close enough to a village for her to buy supplies. She dismissed suggestions her daughters had been exposed to danger.
She added: “For all the time we lived there, yes we saw a few snakes.
“But it was like people finding snakes in their homes, kitchens or toilets.”
Kutina said she spent her days “painting, singing, reading books, and living peacefully” with her children.
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