Indian policemen rescue Nina Kutina, 40, a Russian woman, from a cave in forest area of Ramtirtha hills in southern Indian state of Karnataka, July 9, 2025. Uttara Kannada District Police via AP

Police in India's southern Karnataka state said Wednesday they found a Russian woman and her two young daughters living in isolation in a remote forest cave.

The woman, identified as Nina Kutina, 40, and her daughters, aged 6 and 4, were found by police during a routine patrol to Ramatirtha Hill, a popular tourist site on the coast of Karnataka, on July 9. Police officer Sridhar S.R. said the family had been living in the cave for more than a week.

Police told the BBC that they had been patrolling the area to warn foreigners of potential hazards in the forest when they found the woman and two girls.

"The area is popular with tourists, especially foreigners. But it has 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 Uttara Kannada district, told the BBC.

When officers got closer to the cave, "a little blonde girl came running out," police told the BBC. When the officers followed her inside, they found Kutina and the other child.

Police said they were taking steps to repatriate Kutina to Russia for overstaying her visa. She and her children have been moved to a nearby detention facility for foreigners living illegally in India.

Police said in a statement that Kutina spent her time in the cave meditating by candlelight, and that she told investigating officers she was "interested in staying in the forest and worshiping God."

Sridhar said Kutina told police that she had worked as a tutor of Russian language in Goa, a coastal tourist state in southern India.

"It is nothing but her love for adventure that brought her here," said Sridhar.

He said police found pictures of Hindu deities on the inside walls of the cave where Kutina had been living. In a photograph provided by the police, she is seen in front of makeshift curtains made of red saris that covered the entrance to the cave.

The Russian Embassy in New Delhi didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

The police statement said Kutina sent a message to her friends after she was found.

"Our peaceful life in the cave has ended - our cave home destroyed," she wrote in the message, according to the statement.

The Associated Press contacted Kutina over the phone but she declined to comment.

On Tuesday, she told news agency Press Trust of India that she spent her days in the cave by painting, singing, reading books, and living peacefully with her children.

In video interviews with India's ANI and PTI news agencies, she said she had four children between the ages of 20 and 5 years and said her eldest - "my big son" - who died in a road accident in Goa last year, the BBC reported.

Officials say her second son is 11 years old and is in Russia and that they have shared the information with the consulate, according to the BBC.

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