- NEW DELHI (AP) --
In a capital city where cows roam the streets and elephants plod along
in the bus lanes, it's no surprise to find government buildings overrun
with monkeys.
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- But the officials who work there are fed up. They've
been bitten, robbed and otherwise tormented by monkeys that ransack files,
bring down power lines, screech at visitors and bang on office windows.
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- The Supreme Court has stepped in, decreeing that New
Delhi should be a monkey-free city after citizens filed a lawsuit demanding
protection from the animals.
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- Easier said than done. A past initiative to scare off
the army of Rhesus macaques with ultrahigh frequency loudspeakers didn't
work. A plan to deport them to distant regions has stalled because local
governments refused to have them.
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- There's an ape patrol of fierce-looking primates called
langurs, led about on leashes by keepers. But whenever a langur looms,
the pink-faced, two-foot-tall hooligans simply move elsewhere on government
grounds.
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- "Please do not feed the monkeys," implores
a sign at Raisina Hill, the complex of colonnaded buildings that includes
the president's residence, Parliament, and Cabinet offices.
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- To no avail. Hindus believe that monkeys are manifestations
of the monkey god, Hanuman, and worshippers come to Raisina Hill every
Tuesday handing out bananas.
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- Last year the monkeys made their presence felt by hanging
from window ledges and screeching at reporters arriving for a news conference
with visiting U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
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- "It's a big problem, especially in the evening,"
says Defense Ministry spokesman Amitabha Chakrabarti. Monkeys break into
offices at night and paw through the files looking for food, he said. "Those
who work late hours have to be careful when it is dark."
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- The city estimates at least 1,500 of New Delhi's more
than 5,000 macaques live on Raisina Hill.
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- In the latest effort, a monkey relocation initiative,
400 monkeys have been caught at Raisina Hill in the past year and moved
to a holding area on the outskirts of New Delhi to await their return to
forests in neighboring states, said Madan Thapliyal, a municipality spokesman.
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- But governments of those states have so far refused to
take the furry exiles, saying they have more than enough of their own.
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- Maneka Gandhi, daughter-in-law of the late Indian leader
Indira Gandhi and an independent lawmaker in the lower house of India's
Parliament, believes the monkeys should be left in peace.
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- Gandhi, an animal rights advocate, has already managed
to halt a New Delhi program to spay and neuter stray dogs, saying it was
cruel.
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- She claims that captured macaques, despite their holiness
to Hindus, have been given to laboratories for experimentation or have
died in their holding area cages. They were "relocated to monkey heaven,"
she said.
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- The government says more than 200 monkeys have been relocated
to Gandhi's parliamentary district about 125 miles east of New Delhi. Gandhi
denies it. "It's all rubbish," she said. "Not one monkey
has been relocated to my constituency."
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- Atul K. Gupta, of the Wildlife Institute of India, says
macaques belong in forests, but deforestation and human settlement are
driving them into cities in search of food.
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- Macaques are crafty pickpockets, know how to open refrigerators,
and brazenly snatch lunch pails from government workers, he said. "They
have learned the tricks of finding food in an urban environment."
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- The answer, he said, is to save the forests. Otherwise,
he says, "the problem will get worse."
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of The Associated Press.
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1102/ap_on_re_as/monkey_madness_2
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