Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Feral girl lived with monkeys
BAHRAICH: Police in northern India are reviewing reports of missing children from the past few years in the hopes of identifying a girl who they say they found more than two months ago in a forest living among a troupe of monkeys.
She looked emaciated, her hair dishevelled. But she appeared to be in a comfortable state, until the police arrived.
A group of woodcutters had alerted authorities after spotting the girl, believed to be 10 to 12 years old.
When police approached, the monkeys had surrounded the girl, protecting her and attacking an officer as she screeched at him, the New Indian Express reported this week. After rescuing her, the officer sped away in his patrol car, the monkeys chasing him.
She was admitted to a state hospital in Bahraich in Uttar Pradesh.
Doctors believe the girl had been raised by monkeys for some time and her story has mystified authorities, sending them searching through reports of missing children in an attempt to identify her.
In the Indian press, the girl has also drawn comparisons to Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli, a feral child from Seoni, India, featured as the main character in The Jungle Book.
Based on her behaviour, it appeared she could have lived among the primates since she was an infant, Bahraich police officer Dinesh Tripathi told the newspaper. When the girl arrived at the hospital, she had wounds all over her body. “Her nails and hair were unkempt like monkeys.”
The thin, weak girl looked as if she had not eaten for many days. Although she was capable of walking on her feet, she would sometimes suddenly drop down on all fours.
“The way she moved, even her eating habits, were like that of an animal,” Dr DK Singh, chief medical superintendent at Bahraich District Hospital, said. “She would throw food on the ground and eat it with her mouth, without lifting it with her hands. She used to move around using only her elbows and her knees.”
Doctors are trying to teach her how to transition to life as a human, a task that has proved difficult because of her aversion to human interaction.
“She behaves like an ape and screams loudly if doctors try to reach out to her,” Singh said.
Another doctor treating her said the girl struggled to understand anything, and made apelike noises and facial expressions.
But over the past two months, the girl’s health and behaviour have improved significantly, doctors say. She has begun to walk normally by herself and eat food with her hands. She is unable to speak, but has begun to use gestures to communicate. Occasionally, she smiles, says a hospital spokesperson. – Washington Post