The 50-year-old American woman found chained to a tree in a forest in Maharashtra’s Sindhudurg district, told police that she had tied herself up with iron chains and no one else was involved in the incident. Police cited her mental health conditions for this act of self-harm and brought her to the regional mental hospital in Ratnagiri, where she is undergoing treatment in the psychiatric department.
According to reports, this is not the first time she has done this. Police said there was a similar incident in Tamil Nadu, where she lived before relocating to Goa.
There was massive uproar and wide media attention after a shepherd heard the woman’s cries and found her shackled to a tree on July 27. She was rescued by the police and taken to a hospital.
In a statement to the police on August 3, she said she experiences hallucinations and, during one such moment, must have said her former husband had tied her to the tree. She said she does not have a husband after alleging earlier that he was the one who bound her and left her to die after giving her an injection that caused psychosis and a locked jaw.
After the woman was rescued, the police recovered a note from her bag in which it was mentioned that her “former husband” had tied her to the tree. Based on it, an attempt to murder case was registered against her former husband.
The woman further told police that she brought three locks and iron chains and used one of the locks and chains to tie herself to a tree in a forest near Sonurli village, around 460 km from Mumbai. Police said the woman may have reached the forest near the Maharashtra-Goa border by rail.
“The woman was going to Goa from Mumbai. Since there is a single track, the train halts a couple of times before entering Goa. That spot is close to this forest. We suspect she got off when the train halted,” an officer told The Indian Express.
Police said her mother resides in the US but nobody from her family has contacted them so far. She had a photocopy of her US passport and an Aadhaar card with a Tamil Nadu address, along with a copy of her expired visa, when she was rescued last month.
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