When Fact is Worse than Fiction: ‘Feral Child’ Story Untrue for all the Wrong Reasons

The child appears to be mentally disturbed and was abandoned by her family

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A widely-published story regarding an eight-year-old girl who was found in a wildlife sanctuary in northern India and was allegedly raised by a colony of monkeys has now been debunked as untrue, but the truth is even more tragic, it seems.

The child was discovered by police at the side of a road with a colony of monkeys nearby which led rescuers, and the media, to believe that she had been raised by them.

She exhibited violent behavior in reaction to human contact and was unable to speak or communicate effectively, leading healthcare professionals to the conclusion that this was a case of a feral child raised in the wild by animals.

Or so everyone believed when the story first broke.

Police superintendent Dinesh Tripathi spoke to the New Indian Express and speculated that it appeared as though the girl had been living in the wild “since birth.”

However, forestry officer JP Singh came forward in the aftermath of the story’s publication to dispute such claims, speaking with the British media.

“I think the family members of this girl had been aware that she is not able to speak, and they may have abandoned her near the forest road,” he said.

“If she was living with monkeys it would have been for a few days only, not for a long time,” he added.

D.K. Singh, the chief medical officer of the hospital where the girl was treated, also disputed such claims.

“In India, people do not prefer a female child and she is mentally not sound, so all the more [evidence] she was left there,” he said, as cited by The Independent.

The chief medical officer of the district of Bahraich, Ankur Lal, told reporters that he believes the symptoms of the girl’s mental and physical illnesses led her family to abandon her and rescuers to mistakenly believe that she had been raised in the wild.

The girl has been taken to a children’s home in the city of Lucknow for ongoing treatment and long term care.

This child is 8 years old, there must be dozens, if not hundreds of people who know who she is. 

Feral Child Raised by Monkeys Rescued from Indian Jungle

© Ruptly

An eight-year-old girl has been found living with monkeys in a jungle in India’s Uttar Pradesh. It is unknown how the girl, who is unable to speak and walks on all fours, came to be living in the wild.

The girl was found in Bahraich by sub-inspector Suresh Yadav who was patrolling the Motipur range of Katarniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary near the Nepalese border two months ago.

The sub-inspector spotted the girl with a group of apes and tried to rescue her with the help of other officers. The girl and the monkeys screeched at them, but officers were eventually able to remove the girl.

Bahraich, India

“She was terrified of us, she could not speak or hear us properly,” Inspector Ram Avtar Singh said. “She was surrounded by three monkeys. She had wounds on her body specifically on her elbow and one on her leg.”

The girl is unable to speak or understand language. She is afraid of humans and has been violent at times.

Doctors at the Bahraich District Hospital say that she has improved since treatment began, and can walk with her legs but continues to revert to walking using her arms and legs.  

It isn’t clear how long the girl was living in the wild, or how she ended up there.

“The girl was found two months back, eats and walks like animals do, and runs away on seeing humans,” the hospital’s chief medical officer DK Singh said. “She has marks on her skin, it looks like she has lived with animals for quite some time. Now she is better and healthy, showing improvement.”

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