The young girl sitting on a bed in the hospital in northern India AP AP

INDIAN POLICE ARE attempting to identify a young girl who was discovered living in the wild with monkeys.

The girl, who is unable to speak, is believed to be aged between 10 and 12. She was discovered in January and taken to a hospital in the town of Bahraich.

Doctors who have examined her have said she displays “monkey-like” traits.

The BBC’s Hindi section reports that the girl was discovered playing with a pack of monkeys and imitating their behaviour in the Katarniaghat wildlife sanctuary on the India/Nepal border.

The monkeys reportedly attacked police when they arrived to take the young girl, who was said to be very comfortable in their company, away. At the time she was naked and emaciated, with long hair and wounds on her body.

When first picked up by police she was walking on all fours and ate food from the floor with her mouth, but she has now reverted to walking upright and eating with her hands.

“She is still not able to speak, but understands whatever you tell her and even smiles,” DK Singh, superintendents of the hospital, told AP.

Her condition having significantly improved, the girl is now expected to be handed over to child welfare services in order to gradually re-introduce her to the world.

Meanwhile, police are combing through lists of missing children in an attempt to identify the girl, who has been christened ‘Forest Durga’ by a local magistrate, a reference to a Hindu goddess.

With AP

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