There is no clarity on how and when Kutina and her daughters reached the forest in Karnataka.
Police said she told them that they had been living in the cave for a week. They added that she had bought some vegetables and groceries, including a popular brand of instant noodles, from a local store, a week ago.
They said she told them that she arrived in Karnataka from Goa where she also claimed to have lived in a cave. She also said that one of her daughters was born in a Goa cave.
In her interview to PTI on Wednesday, she complained about the detention centre where she’s been lodged with her daughters saying “it is like jail”.
“We lived in a very good place. But now we cannot be alone. We cannot go outside. Here it’s very dirty, and there’s not enough food,” she added.
It’s not clear when and how Kutina came to India.
Police say she told them she had lost her passport, but they were able to find an older expired passport among her belongings which showed that she had come to India on a business visa which was valid from 18 October 2016 to 17 April 2017.
But she overstayed, was caught a year later, and the Goa office of the FRRO issued her “an exit permit” to leave India. According to immigration stamps in her passport, she entered Nepal on 19 April 2018 and exited three months later.
It’s not clear where she went after that, but Kutina told ANI that overall she had “travelled to at least 20 countries” – at least “four of them since leaving India in 2018”.
It’s also not clear when she returned to India next, although some reports say she’s been back since February 2020. She told PTI that she returned because “we really love India”.
Kutina admitted that her visa expired a few months back. “We don’t have our visa, valid visa, our visa finished,” she said, adding that the lapse happened because she was grieving for her dead son and couldn’t think of anything else.