The story about an Indian girl raised by monkeys turns out to be a fairy tale after all.

Indian authorities believe that the 8-year-old girl, discovered in the Katarniya Ghat forest range in the state of Uttar Pradesh, was recently abandoned by her family because she is mentally and physically disabled. The nature of her disability is still being investigated.

Authorities initially said the girl crawled on all fours, screeched at strangers and ate off the floor “like an animal” when she was found in a northern Indian forest in January.

But the child, who still can’t speak, is now walking normally, part of the evidence that she was not raised by monkeys and was probably in the wild with them for only a few days.

Reports that park rangers had to fight off monkeys to save the girl were also false, officials said.

The chief forest officer in the area said she was actually found on a roadside, not deep in the wilderness. And though there were monkeys near her, rangers did not have to fight them off to save her, or find evidence she lived with them.

Girls are not as valued as boys in India, especially in rural areas, and it’s not uncommon for baby girls to be killed. There is also little support in the country for families with disabled children.

“In India, people do not prefer a female child and she is mentally not sound,” said DK Singh, the chief medical officer of the hospital in Bahraich, where the girl has been treated since she was found. “So all the more [evidence] she was left there.”

Rangers monitor the forest closely, officials said, both in person and using surveillance cameras, so it was unlikely she could have survived in the wilderness for long without being spotted.

The girl was moved on Saturday from the hospital to a children’s home about 130 miles south of the hospital in Lucknow.

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