Ratanakkiri ‘jungle girl’ claimed by another family

The decade-old mystery surrounding “jungle girl” Rochom P’nhieng has taken yet another turn, with a family from Vietnam coming forward to claim her as their long-lost daughter.

P’nhieng captured international headlines when she was discovered wandering naked in a Ratanakkiri forest in 2007. She was taken in by a family in Un village who identified her as their daughter, claiming that she went missing while herding buffalo at the age of 9 or 10 in 1989 and was believed to have roamed the jungle for some 18 years.

However, a man named Pel, 70, from Gia Lai province in Vietnam, visited P’nhieng’s Cambodian custodians last Wednesday and Saturday, claiming that the woman was his long-lost daughter. Pel told P’nhieng’s purported Cambodian brother, Rochom Khamphy, the woman was not called P’nhieng but Tak and that she had disappeared in 2006 at the age of 23 after having a mental breakdown.

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