Amala and Kamala

Amala (died 21 September 1921) and Kamala (died 14 November 1929) were two "feral girls" from India who were alleged to have been raised by a wolf family.

Their story earned substantial mainstream attention and debate, particularly because the account was reported and promoted by only one source, the reverend who claimed to have discovered the girls. Most researchers argue the girls were autistic, and in his book L'Enigme des enfants-loup ("Enigma of the Wolf-Children," 2007) French surgeon Serge Aroles concluded that the reverend's story was a hoax.

Appearance

In 1926, The Reverend Joseph Amrito Lal Singh, rector of the local orphanage, published an account in the Calcutta Statesman saying that the two girls were given to him by a man who lived in the jungle near the village of Godamuri, in the district of Midnapore, west of Calcutta, and that the girls, when he first saw them, lived in a sort of cage near the house.J. H. Hutton: Wolf-Children in Folklore, Transactions of the Folk-Lore Society, vol. 51, nr. 1, pages 9 to 31, William Glaisher Ltd., London, March 1940 Later, he claimed that he himself rescued the girls from the wolves' den on October 9, 1920. He named the children and wrote his observations of them in a "diary" (consisting of loose sheets, some dated, some undated) for almost ten years — which, if accurate, would represent one of the best documented efforts to observe and rehabilitate feral children. The...
Read More