While on patrol last week looking for any tourists who might have gotten stuck in the landslide-prone forests in the southern Indian town of Gokarna, police inspector Sridhar S.R. spotted a statue of a Hindu deity peeking out through the lush green vegetation.
Moving closer, he saw makeshift curtains made of red saris that obscured the entrance to a cave. When he looked in, he was surprised to find a woman and two young girls living inside.
The discovery on July 9 in Karnataka State set off days of sleuthing by the police and government officials to piece together a nine-year odyssey that had led the woman to the cave.
The woman, it turned out, was a 40-year-old Russian national named Nina Kutina. She had been living in the cave, which she sometimes used as a retreat, for a week with her daughters, ages 4 and 6. She practiced yoga and meditated by candlelight, and cooked on a wood-fired stove, Mr. Sridhar said. Photos of Hindu deities lined the walls.
“Caves are heaven in her mind-set,” Mr. Sridhar said.
Mr. Sridhar and his team initially tried to cajole Ms. Kutina into leaving the cave in the gathering dark, given the area’s heavy rainfall, perilous location and reputation as a habitat for poisonous snakes.
But Ms. Kutina told them that she was “interested in staying in the forest and worshiping God,” said M. Narayana, the superintendent of police for Uttara Kannada, the district in which Gokarna sits. The cave is in the town’s Ramateertha hills, where seasonal waterfalls and landslides are common.
Eventually, the police escorted the trio to a shelter for women run by a nonprofit group.
There, after charging her mobile phone, Ms. Kutina emailed her relatives in Russian. “Our peaceful life in the cave has ended — our cave home destroyed,” she wrote, according to a translation provided by the police. “From years living under the open sky in harmony with nature, we know: no snake or animal ever harmed us
