The mother of a Russian 'Mowgli' girl rescued from a home piled high with filth told court she was raising her child 'in good conditions' and she left the apartment clean.
Worried doctors in Moscow say the five-year-old child called Lyubov cannot speak, has never seen fruit nor slept in a bed, and is terrified of water.
Her university-educated mother Irina Garashchenko, 47, has been remanded in custody for two months on suspicion of attempted murder.
She faces up to 15 years in jail if convicted, but claims someone staged a 'provocation' to mess up her apartment.
Speaking for the first time from behind the bars of a court cage she told reporters that Moscow investigators suspect her of 'beating' the child and risking her life by neglect.
On the state of her home - so bad that rescuers wore chemical protection equipment when they entered it - the mother insisted: 'It cannot be true.'
'But I'm her mum, I gave birth to her, to my first child, when I was 41. And for five and a half years I fed her, raised her. Of course I love her. I would never leave her.'
The girl did not go to nursery school 'because I was educating her myself… She can communicate, she can speak. I worry like every mother. I want to see her, hug and kiss her.
