A Russian woman who made global headlines after being found living in a cave in India with her two young daughters has flown back to her country, an official told the BBC.
Nina Kutina, 40, and her daughters – aged six and five – were rescued on 9 July by policemen on a routine patrol in a forest in the southern state of Karnataka.
The woman, who did not have valid documents to stay in India, had been sent to a foreigners’ detention centre along with her daughters.
Last week, the Karnataka high court asked the federal government to issue documents to Ms Kutina and her daughters to return home.
They left for Russia on 28 September, an official at the Foreigners’ Regional Registration Office (FRRO), who wanted to stay anonymous, told BBC Hindi. Ms Kutina’s minor son from another relationship, who was later found living in Goa state, also went with them.
The high court had been hearing a petition filed by Dror Shlomo Goldstein, an Israeli businessman living in Goa, who said he was the father of the two minor girls. He had asked the court to stop the children from being sent back to Russia and appealed for their custody.
Mr Goldstein hasn’t commented on the court order yet. He has the option to appeal against it, but it’s not clear whether a judgment in his favour could compel the children to be sent back to India.
Mr Goldstein had earlier told a TV channel that Ms Kutina had left Goa without informing him and that he had filed a police complaint. He also said that he had been “providing for their [the woman and the two minor girls] well-being for a long time”.
In the order, the court however said that despite Mr Goldstein’s claims, the mum and the children had “rather inexplicably” been “found in an isolated cave”.
The court also said that Mr Goldstein could not explain why they had been living in the cave “until they were found there and the authorities began [taking] action for their rehabilitation”.
The police team that found the three had earlier said they were on a routine patrol near Ramteertha hills in the Gokarna forest, which borders the tourist paradise of Goa, when they spotted brightly coloured clothes hung near a cave.
When they got closer – the entrance to the cave had been curtained off with brightly coloured saris – they saw a “little blonde girl” running out. When the shocked policemen followed her inside, they found Ms Kutina and the other child.
The three of them had meagre possessions – plastic mats, clothes, packets of instant noodles and some other grocery items – and the cave was leaking.
The police told the BBC in July that they had a tough time convincing the mother that it was dangerous to stay in the isolated location with snakes and wild animals in the forest. The police quoted her as saying: “Animals and snakes are our friends. Humans are dangerous.”
Police said she told them that they had been living in the cave for a week when they were found. She also told the police that she came to Karnataka from Goa where she also claimed to have lived in a cave. She said that her youngest daughter was born in a Goa cave.
Ms Kutina had defended her lifestyle in video interviews to Indian news agency ANI, saying she and her children were happy living like that and that “nature gives good health”.
The police, however, said that they could not take any chances as the area was prone to landslides during the monsoon season.
Ms Kutina and her daughters were taken for a medical examination and then shifted to a detention centre.
Mr Goldstein’s lawyer, Beena PK, argued in court that deportation would not be in the interests of the children, citing India being a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and provisions of the Goa Children Act, 2003.
But the lawyer for the federal government, Aravind Kamath, told the court that this case could not be described as deportation’ because Ms Kutina herself had written to the Russian embassy expressing her wish to return to her home country.
Court documents show that the Russian embassy offered Ms Kutina and the children an emergency travel window between 26 September and 9 October.
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