In the monsoon-drenched forests of a coastal town in southern India known for its lush hills and spiritual retreats, a Russian woman was found living off grid in a cave with her two small daughters, without electricity or modern amenities.
Police officers patrolling the slippery trails of Ramteertha Hills in India’s Karnataka state stumbled upon an unusual sight earlier this month when they saw a cave curtained with a cloth and a little blonde girl running out barefoot from a hole in the mountain.
The woman, identified as Nina Kutina, 40, had made a home deep in the woods with her daughters, aged five and six, police said. The family had no valid visas and was undocumented in the country.
Police officer Sridhar SR confirmed the family had been residing in the cave for over a week.
Authorities are now arranging for Kutina’s repatriation to Russia, as she had overstayed her visa. She and her daughters have been transferred to a detention facility, near the state capital Bengaluru, for foreign nationals living in India illegally.
Kutina has defended her decision to live in the wild with her daughters and said they were healthy and happy in the forest.
Kutina’s case has since snowballed into a tale of adventure, parental rights, bureaucracy and international legal hurdles.
Forest dwelling discovered by chance
Authorities had ramped up forest patrols in the Gokarna forest bordering tourist hotspot Goa due to landslide risks in the area and it was one of these patrols that found the dwelling on 9 July. The cave lay within the jungle.
Kutina was reluctant to leave the cave as officers tried to warn her about the dangers of living in the wild.
“It is nothing but her love for adventure that brought her here,” Sridhar SR said.
He added that Kutina told the police she had worked as a tutor of Russian in Goa and spent time in the cave meditating by candlelight, feeding her children, painting, singing, and reading books.
Kutina has defended her decision. “We were not dying, and I did not bring my children, my daughters, to die in jungle. They did not feel bad, they were very happy, they swam in waterfall, they lived, had very good place for sleeping, a lot of lessons with art making, we made from clay, we painted, we ate good, I was cooking with gas, very good and tasty food,” she told the ANI news agency.
Kutina says they were not living far from civilisation. She chose that location because it is very close to a village where she bought supplies.
“It’s very big and beautiful cave, and not small, and it’s like it has window to look to ocean.”
Who is Nina Kutina?
Russian by birth, Kutina has told Indian news agencies that she has not lived in Russia for 15 years. She has travelled extensively – Costa Rica, Bali, Thailand, Malaysia, Ukraine, Nepal – and says she gave birth to four children, including a son who died in a road accident in Goa last year. Her other son, aged 11, lives in Russia.
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The two girls with her in the forest were reportedly fathered by Dror Goldstein, an Israeli businessman currently residing in India. He told NDTV that Kutina had left Goa with the children without informing him, prompting him to file a missing persons complaint.
Goldstein is now pushing for joint custody and opposes the government’s plan to deport the children to Russia.
Police say Kutina sent a long and emotional text message to her friends after she was found in the cave. In the message, she condemned the authorities for forcibly removing her and her family from a peaceful, natural life into what she describes as a prison-like shelter.
“And we were placed in a prison without sky, without grass, without a waterfall, with an icy hard floor on which we now sleep for ‘protection from rain and snakes’,” she wrote.
“Not once in our entire life there did a snake ever harm us. Not a single animal attacked us. For many years, the only thing we feared was people.” She also expressed her anger with humans, saying they are the “only creatures who act abnormally”.
“I’m hurt by the world of humans – where people with no proper education are given positions that give them power over the lives of others – whole families, even,” she added.
“They carry out these horrifying vigilante ‘justices’, based purely on their fears, on childish fairytales, not on real experience, not on knowledge, but on rumours, on cowardice.”
Life in the cave
The three were found with only their belongings, including plastic mats, a few clothes, some grocery items, and packets of instant noodles. There was no electricity or running water, but Kutina says they were content. Days were spent swimming in a nearby waterfall, cooking simple meals, and making art from clay and natural materials.
The entrance to their cave had been curtained off with colourful saris.
Videos shot by police show the children smiling and dressed in bright Indian clothes, seemingly at ease. Kutina told reporters that they had access to groceries from a nearby village and that she made sure her daughters were well-fed and engaged.
Kutina’s forest stay, she says, was not driven by spirituality but by the family’s love for nature. A Hindu idol of Panduranga Vittala, an avatar of the god Krishna, was found in her cave.
“It is not about spirituality. It’s not about it. We just like natural because it gives us health….”
The children have not attended school so far, according to a Times of India report.
Kutina, who claims to be a trained teacher in art and Russian literature, said she plans to formally homeschool her children with proper documentation.
“I earn money through all these activities. And if I don’t have any work, if I can’t find anyone who needs what I can offer, then my brother, my father, or even my son helps me. So we always have enough money for what we need,” she said.
Kutina’s legal status
The puzzle of when and how Kutina entered – or re-entered – India remains unsolved.
Police found an old passport showing she arrived in India on a business visa in October 2016, valid until April 2017. She overstayed and was eventually issued an exit permit by Goa’s Foreigners Regional Registration Office in 2018.
She then travelled to Nepal on 19 April 2018 and some other places before she returned after three months. Reports suggest she has been in India since at least 2020, although no clear immigration record exists to verify this.
She said she has “travelled to at least 20 countries” and she has travelled to around “four of them since leaving India in 2018”.
Kutina says the visa lapse was unintentional, the result of grief over her son’s death. “We don’t have a valid visa. Our visa finished. I was so sad, I could not think about visa,” she said.
