Asia Times: India's monkeyman casts a magic spell


	May 22, 2001	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

India's monkeyman casts a magic spell
By Sultan Shahin

NEW DELHI - With almost predictable regularity, India every few years throws up a bizarre story to confirm its reputation for the exotic.

Several years ago Hindus all over the world were offering milk to statues or framed pictures of Lord Ganesha, the lord of and destroyer of obstacles, who was reported to be drinking it by the gallons.

Now it is yagnas (religious ceremonies involving the burning of tons of ghee - butter oil - along with chanting mantras) to propitiate the gods - 330 million at the last count - to save Indians from a mysterious monkeyman, a furry, winged, steel-clawed creature, half-man, half-monkey, that is reported to have been be terrorizing people in the capital and beyond for the past six weeks.

Four people are said to have been killed, including a pregnant woman, though the overworked police confirm only two, and scores injured, bitten and clawed, in attacks by the malevolent entity (somewhat akin to the ardh-narishwar or narasimha of the Hindu mythology), that can appear in several parts of the city at the same time, mostly nights, attack sleeping people, particularly children, and then disappear without trace.

Descriptions of the beast vary. But he would appear to be six or seven feet tall, with springs on the soles of his feet that help him jump several floors at a time to evade capture. He has steel claws, or maybe they are made of brass, and they are very sharp and long. He has been spotted during the day wearing a helmet and sunglasses. Some people say it is like a cat with tawny glowing eyes, and one said it has "flaming red eyes and green lights glowing on its chest".

Some say it carries a remote-like contraption that enables it to fly. Unless you are sleeping, you know when he is coming for you because he announces his presence, sometimes with an eerie whistle, sometimes with a howling wind. Sometimes one just spies his shadow, sometimes one sees his shape. Like the devil, he is everywhere and nowhere.

The police have released an identikit prepared on the basis of eyewitness evidence. This picture has been flashed across the country through electronic and print media repeatedly to warn people and help them fight the creature. A television station has stationed cameras at eight points in New Delhi apparently frequented by him to capture him on film. Police patrols have been increased and a rapid action force is to be deployed.

As a positive spin-off, most minor crimes have stopped. The criminal class, too, is scared.

Another positive development is that nce defunct street lamps on dark street corners in the power-strapped city have sprung to life in an effort to calm terrified residents and help law enforcers. Sushil Kumar Lal, a senior Delhi police official, says the force has requested a halt to overnight power stoppages and even the darkest nooks and crannies of the city are being given electric light all night long, though it is summer and the time of perennial power shortages.

"We have had a meeting with officials and engineers of the Delhi Electricity Board and asked them to ensure there is uninterrupted power supply through the night," explained Kumar. "The darkness, thanks to frequent power cuts, can whip up mob hysteria. People are always seeing phantoms in the dark. The police can also do with the extra lighting when patrolling crowded streets and neighborhoods," Kumar added. Areas in Delhi which daily undergo at least two- or three-hour power cuts several times a day are now reaping unexpected benefits from the monkeyman hysteria.

"I am so glad there is electricity throughout the night and most of the day that I can write a personal 'thank you' to the monkeyman," says Abhinav Prasad, a resident of Delhi's eastern Yojan Vihar area. "It is amazing that we need a surreal creature to get normal power supply," he added. It is indeed a mystery as to where the authorities have suddenly found all this extra power, and why they have not made use of it before.

Police have offered a reward of 50,000 rupees (over US$1,000) for information leading to the capture of the "monkeyman", which Joint Commissioner of Police Suresh Roy says is not an animal but "humans involved in mischief". "We have already narrowed down our suspicion on the people involved in the mischief," Roy told the media. "We should be able to end this soon."

According to local media reports, four people have died and 60 others have been injured, mainly due to panic-stricken attempts to escape the elusive monster. A large number of people have fallen from rooftops or while rushing down stairs, mostly in Delhi's crowded eastern and northern areas. Three frantic people have fallen to their deaths from buildings in the past week because they thought the mysterious creature was chasing them.

The city police have set up a special team to hunt down the monkeyman. Police receive numerous calls from panic-stricken residents in eastern and northeastern suburbs of the city, mostly at nights, but most of the calls turn out to be hoaxes. Police say they will not tolerate any more bogus phone calls and have arrested six persons on such charges. "While at one place the police found an actual monkey, at another people took a dog for the monkeyman," Joint Commissioner of Police Amod Kanth said. Yet another person was seriously beaten by vigilantes looking for the creature on Friday.

Along with the police, vigilante bands have taken to the streets armed with sticks and batons. Several innocent people, including some simply carrying helmets in their cars, have been attacked and lynched.

Skeptics are, however, not taking all this seriously. Sociologists and psychologists are in great demand in newspapers and television programs to try and explain the periodic mass hysteria that engulfs India.

One of India's foremost sociologists, Ashish Nandy, thinks Indians need some magic in their lives. As life in the age of technology is growing increasingly mundane and boring, belief in the supernatural is one way of fulfilling that need. His advice: make a cup of coffee, watch the monkeyman on television and enjoy yourself. What Nandy doesn't seem to realize, however, is that there are 7 million people in Delhi who do not have proper houses, not to speak of coffee pots and television sets. The monkeyman has made it a point to attack such people.

Although several people, as many as 60 of them, claim to have been bitten and scratched by the monkeyman, skeptics described the injuries as "self-inflicted". "Investigation of the marks shown by the victims so far did not show any sign of involvement of animal claws or human nails," Sanal Edamarku, president of the Indian Rationalist Society told the Hindu newspaper: "It is a well-known phenomenon in psychiatry that people with a pathological desire for attention inflict wounds upon themselves or strange marks on their body."

The authorities are coming in for a great deal of criticism for their handling of the affair. Writing for the widely circulated Hindustan Times, for instance, Pankaj Vohra is amazed that while the rumors have affected the normal life of a large number of people, no person holding a position of authority in the Delhi government, its allied agencies or the police, has made any attempt to dispel wrong impressions. In fact, first the Uttar Pradesh (UP) police and then the Delhi police contributed to the panic with irrational responses, least expected from law and order maintaining agencies.

The UP police from Ghaziabad released a computer generated sketch of the alleged monkeyman while the Delhi police went a step further by offering the reward. Such high rewards have in the past been offered for the arrest of dreaded criminals such Bunty Gujjar, Lashkar-e-Tayebba militant Ejaz Rasool and the Bahadugarh serial rapist.

While the rumors continue to spread, a newspaper, Pioneer, considered close to the government, described the entire phenomenon as the handiwork of the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan. This, of course, is not surprising. In the words of Siddharth Vardarajan of The Times of India, the ISI is considered only slightly less omnipotent and omnipresent in India than the Almighty God. Prior to this, a muezzin (Muslim priest who calls the faithful to prayer from the roof of the mosque), was mistaken as the monkeyman and nearly thrashed by a mob.

Reporters who have visited the affected areas have been surprised as to why the police have exaggerated some incidents where so-called victims simply had a few minor scratches they were unable to explain. Secondly, the creature has left behind no evidence in the form of hair or footprints. Similarly, a police force of 1,500 has been deployed on night patrols, while they should rather have been investigating the true causes of the deaths attributed to the monkeyman.

In several places mobs have gone on the rampage and beaten up innocent people. These mobs have not been brought to justice. Delhi has no facility to conduct DNA tests on the wounds reportedly inflicted by the monkeyman. Experts say a simple forensic test could give some direction to investigations, but DNA tests would have the final say. For such tests, the samples have to be either sent to Hyderabad or Kolkata.

India is no stranger to mass hysteria. But eventually things settle down. One can only hope the monkeyman hysteria will have the same end. Already, with lights on all night in all parts of the city, the monkeyman's room for manouver is shrinking. People starved of magic in their lives may also have had a refill that will last them for another few years before the need arises to create another thirsty god or a mysterious monkeyman.

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