Panaji: Police in Karnataka rescued a 40-year-old Russian woman and her two minor daughters aged 6 and 4 from a cave in Ramatirtha hills near Gokarna in Karnataka’s Uttara Kannada district last week, The Indian Express reported.
The rescue follows the complaint lodged by her partner and father of the two children Dror Goldstein (38), an Israeli man, after he knew that Nina Kutina had taken their children to Gokarna in Karnataka without informing him.
The missing persons’ complaint that Goldstein lodged at Goa’s Panaji police station on December 14, 2024 reveals the couple’s troubled relationship, started after meeting in October 2017 at Arambol during his visit to Goa where they ‘fell in love’.
Dror Goldstein (38), has now urged authorities not to deport his daughters to Russia with Nina Kutina alongside seeking their shared custody.
Goldstein’s complaint said that the couple eventually started living together at her place where two of her sons from earlier partner also lived.
They went from love to the point of near estrangement as she allegedly started misbehaving with him and extracting ‘monies’ from him.
In May 2018, the couple made a travel plan to Israel, which did not happen because of documentation issues stemming from overstaying without a visa. Also, the lack of travel permits for her son led to her being deported to Russia, thus she ended up living in Ukraine.
Following this Dror Goldstein ‘slowly started cutting off’ his contact with Nina Kutina because of ‘her behaviour towards me. I felt as if I was used only for money purposes.’
In an email to him in June she revealed she was pregnant and later that year a girl was born in Ukraine.
In March 2019, Dror Goldstein went to Ukraine with his mother to meet his partner and their daughter.
Following which his visits became frequent and the couple with their daughter travelled to Costa Rica.
However, Goldstein returned to Israel due to some ‘personal reasons’ and Nina and her daughter came to India, staying in Goa in January 2020.
After Nina was pregnant again and a second child was born in May 2020, Goldstein claimed to have supported financially her and the children.
He did not want to travel to India because he wanted to “avoid verbal abuse” from Nina.
However, in December 2021, When he came to India to meet his daughters, Nina, he said, appeared to have no concern for their children’s formal education, ‘she was totally against sending her children to school or other educational institutions, and whenever asked, she would say that she doesn’t believe in formal education’.
Goldstein complained that Nina “started avoiding” him and kept his daughters away from him.
The complaint reveals that she used to disappear without informing him for days.
‘I tried to approach her and our daughters and made multiple attempts, but she never permitted me to meet them,’ he reportedly said.
Her elder son from previous relationship died in an accident in October 2024, Goldstein said in the complaint.
Though he help her financially alongside getting a room for her and their children in Panaji, she restrained him from meeting his daughters most of the time and went on to ‘brainwash’ them to keep him away.
Goldstein went to Nepal on November 6, 2024 in order to review visa and upon his return on November 22, he found Nina missing.
Later he came to know that she had taken their daughters to Gokarna in Karnataka.
Following which he filed a missing complaint expressing concern for the ‘health and emotional well-being of my daughters’, seeking personally to be part of his daughters’ lives and ‘provide for them financially and emotionally’.
‘I am filing this missing complaint to know about the exact whereabouts, location and condition of my minor daughters,’ the complaint said.
An official at the Panaji police reportedly said that the complaint was received, adding ‘The complainant was subsequently summoned to verify certain facts in the complaint, but he did not show up’.