The seizure was made late on Monday, when police stopped a car in the city. A subsequent search revealed that the girl, who was sitting in the back seat, had 39 packs of heroin hidden in her clothes.
"The total weight of heroin was over 16 grams," the police department said in a statement.
The taxi driver said that two unknown women had asked him to give the child a lift.
"The girl said that she had no parents, that she was from [the eastern Ukrainian city of] Kharkov and did not know how she got to Nizhny Novgorod," police said. "She said she was eight years old, although she looks like she is about twelve."
The girl is currently being held at a custody center for juvenile offenders in the Nizhny Novgorod Region while her identity is established.
