The forest owlet was recorded in central India, and until 1997 was known from just seven specimens in museums collected in northern Maharashtra, and south-east Madhya Pradesh or western Odisha. The last record until then was based on a specimen claimed from Gujarat in 1914 by Richard Meinertzhagen. Searches in Gujarat had been futile until the species was rediscovered in November 1997 by a group of American ornithologists in the foothills of the Satpura Range, northeast of Bombay. The cause of the earlier failed searches was due to the resubmission of a stolen specimen with the falsification of locality data.