Monkey in New DeliJust a few weeks ago the deputy mayor of New Delhi, India fell to his death trying to fend off a pack of monkeys. The monkeys haven’t let up in their menacing presence in the city since the deputy mayors death. Over this past weekend several people were injured and had to seek medical treatment after being attacked by monkeys in the city.

“Wildlife officials are trying to find them. As police we’re not experts in dealing with monkeys. We can deal with mad bulls but monkeys are more difficult,” he said.

Along with an estimated 35,000 sacred cows and buffaloes that roam free in the capital, marauding monkeys have been longstanding pests.

They routinely scamper through government offices, courts and even police stations and hospitals as well as terrorise neighbourhoods.

Trouble boiled over in late October when the city’s deputy mayor, Sawinder Singh Bajwa, 52, fell to his death driving away monkeys from his home.

He was on his balcony reading a newspaper when four monkeys appeared, his family said. As he waved a stick to scare them away, he tumbled over the edge and died in hospital from head injuries. [source]

There are an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 rouge monkeys in the Indian capital. The residents of the city are demanding to be rid of the monkeys. Officials say they want to be rid of the monkeys, but they have a shortage of ‘monkey catchers’. Really. There are people who have the job, ‘monkey catcher’.

Then on top of that, they have the problem that when the release the urban monkeys into the wild they terrorize the forest monkeys and steal food for villagers. These are real gangsta monkeys.

Its a real problem for the Indians. They have monkeys that are very bold and aggressive. They roam into people’s homes, into offices buildings, court rooms and basically behave very badly. The Indians are under pressure to get rid of the monkeys but because of the predominance of the Hindu religion that believes in reincarnation, its unacceptable to kill them. The animal activists are also pressuring them not to kill the little hoodlums. They can’t run them out of the city into the forest because they terrorize the monkeys who live in the forest and the villagers. Plus, as I wrote earlier, they don’t have enough ‘monkey catchers’ anyway.

The problem is only escalating while they are trying to figure out how to solve this problem.