A 50-year-old woman with an American passport was found with her leg chained to a tree in a jungle in southern Maharashtra’s Sindhudurg district. Police believe she may have been there for nearly 48 hours before a shepherd heard her cries and alerted them.
The police have recovered a photocopy of her US passport, and an Aadhaar card that identifies her as Lalita Kayi and carries a Tamil Nadu address.
She was admitted to the Institute of Psychiatry and Human Behaviour, Goa Medical College, at 12.24 am on Sunday. Doctors and police officials say she is not in a condition to talk, and the only lead they have is a few lines she scribbled on a piece of paper.
An officer also said that the police found in her bag a note which read “my former husband”, who investigators believe lives in Tamil Nadu. “We have found that the woman, who appears to have been born in the US, also resided in Goa for some time. We are trying to find out whom she was in touch with in the past few months,” the officer said.
To trace the “former husband”, police teams are conducting searches in Goa, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, officials said.
An official involved in the probe said that it was a shepherd who heard her cries for help on the evening of July 27 in Sonurli village in Sawantwadi, located over 450 kilometres from Mumbai. He alerted the police, who broke the chain and rescued her. The police then rushed her to a hospital in Sawantwadi, from where she was moved elsewhere for advanced treatment.
The police said that while she is out of danger, they have been informed by doctors that she might be suffering from psychiatric problems. The police have also recovered a medical prescription along with some cash and documents. An officer said she is extremely frail owing to dehydration and not having eaten anything in the past couple of days.
Dr Shivanand Bandekar, Dean, Goa Medical College, said the woman’s condition is stable. “She has some wounds on the leg, which are being assessed by the surgery department. She appears to be suffering from a mental health condition. She is not speaking much and only communicates through writing in response to a question. We do not know for how long she did not eat, but her vital signs are stable. A board is meeting on Tuesday to assess her mental health and if there is any history of an illness.”
Officials said her visa had expired and suspect that she has been in India for the past decade.
A police team from Sindhudurg district visited Goa on Monday evening to record her statement, but were unsuccessful. A police official, requesting anonymity, said that during initial questioning in Sindhudurg, she was able to convey to the police that her former husband had allegedly chained her to the tree and abandoned her in the forest.
“She could hardly speak, but managed to say a few words. She scribbled in English on a piece of paper, claiming that her erstwhile partner left her there. We are trying to trace him to verify this,” the official said.
