Monkeys return as lockdown eases

shimla — Thousands of monkeys are menacing the historic city of Shimla, where sterilisations and illegal poisonings have failed to blunt their frequent attacks on tourists and farms.

During India’s nationwide coronavirus lockdown, most of the macaques left the city for the countryside to look for food.

As restrictions have eased, they have returned to bully inhabitants and snatch grocery bags, and up to 50 troops of hungry monkeys now prowl the former colonial British summer escape in the Himalayan hills.

The city of 160,000 people has long been a major draw for tourists seeking to avoid India’s searing summer heat, but the food waste they leave behind has become a magnet for the hungry simians.

Nand Lal showed AFP the wounds from one altercation with

157K

Monkeys have

been sterilised

across

Himachal

Pradesh in

recent years

the animals this month. “I was passing a group of monkeys when the dominant male suddenly attacked me and three piled in,” others said the 46-year-old, who required multiple anti-rabies injections after the assault.

“Luckily I could grab a stick and fight them off. I had bruises all over my face and head. I was bleeding from a bite on my back.”

he of Days his could attackers after still hear the and assault, the the “chattering” two Lal dozen said, other monkeys that watched.

“People are very scared and they don’t know what to do,” according to retired High Court judge Kuldeep Chand Sood, who pointed to a bite in his leg inflicted as he sat reading on the terrace of his home.

“I was just going through my book when suddenly a big monkey attacked and bit me,” he said at his home in the macaque-infested Sanjauli district.

Many Sanjauli homes now have metal cages over their terraces and windows to keep out the invaders, who have even been known to steal from refrigerators.

Rajesh Sharma, a government wildlife officer in Shimla, said garbage bins overflowing with food attract the animals.

Improving rubbish collection has meant “the monkeys are finding it harder”.

“But their habits are the same. They now try to snatch any packet they see in anyone’s hand,” she explained.

“If they don’t find it, they try and bite someone.” —