Police in Nigeria say they have freed a girl who’d been locked up in a room by her parents for 10 years in the northern state of Kano.

Officers say they acted after a tip-off, and the girl’s 35-year-old mother has been arrested but the father is on the run.

The girl had been confined since she was five years, according to police. She was held in a dirty environment and without being properly fed, reports BBC News Pidgin.

The 15-year-old is currently being treated at the Muritala Mohammed hospital in Kano.

Last year, there were a number of cases of police rescuing people similarly locked up for years across northern Nigeria. It is reported that stepmothers and other relatives are sometimes found to be the culprits, not often the parents as in this case.