The New Delhi Monkey Man

Mistaken Identity

On May 15 2001, a short-statured Hindu Saddhu walking through the Noida district of New Delhi was suddenly seized by an enraged mob and dragged to the nearest police station. Three days later, a teenage van driver was snatched from his vehicle and beaten within an inch of his life by another angry mob.

Both men had fallen victim to a wave of hysteria sweeping through the overcrowded city. They had been mistaken for the infamous New Delhi Monkey Man.

A Legend is Born

Early in May 2001, rumours began spreading though New Delhi that an aggressive monkey-like entity was rampaging through the overcrowded suburbs after sunset.

Householders who habitually slept on their flat roofs during the sweltering Indian summer claimed that they were being indiscriminately attacked by the Monkey Man, who leapt from roof to roof, biting and scratching as he went. One man had even fallen to his death fleeing from the creature.

Descriptions of the entity varied considerably, but most witnesses agreed that it was short and furry with glowing red eyes.

"Its body was covered with fur but it looked human. It screeched at us and jumped around like a real monkey," said one. Another, who fought the Monkey Man for ten minutes, claimed it was "1.3 meters tall, with a body shaped like a monkey but with human legs".

"It made a fist like a man, and it could hit hard," he told reporters. "I tried to subdue it, but it was too strong for me. It lifted me over its head and threw me into some trash barrels."

The Monkey Man Evolves

While initial reports described the Monkey Man as appearing fundamentally simian, the creature soon acquired some bizarre embellishments. Some witnesses claimed that it wore glasses, others a helmet, and others that it had lethal metal claws. One witness had even seen it shapeshift:

"It was a monkey alright, and about 4 foot tall, but as soon as I grabbed it, it turned itself into a cat with tawny, glowing eyes."

Kumar Yadav displays the scars he received from the Monkey Man.

Others claimed that the Monkey Man was a cyborg possessing superhuman powers that enabled it to leap over houses with a single bound.

"It looks like a monkey and has green lights as eyes and springs on its feet," explained one resident. "It has a huge metallic silver hand which glows in the dark".

Some witnesses had even seen a "motherboard" beneath the creature's furry chest and wires sticking out of its head. Four people noticed "red and blue bulbs" on the entity's body, while an angry mob chasing it through the Chhaprola district saw it escape in a car driven by men carrying "sacks full of equipment".

A rumour spread that the Monkey Man could be destroyed if you doused it in liquid. Householders began keeping buckets full of water by their front doors just in case they were attacked by the elusive cyborg.

Armed Response

The police professed themselves baffled by the sudden outbreak of monkey madness. They offered a reward of 75,000 rupees to anyone who could provide a photo or video of the creature. Various police spokesmen suggested that the Monkey Man was either an escaped zoo animal, a "prankster with a sick sense of humour," or one of the many feral rhesus monkeys that ran wild through the slums.

Another theory was that residents were so frustrated with the frequent night-time power outages that they were phoning in fake Monkey Man reports, knowing the authorities would turn the electricity back on before setting out to hunt the beast.

Many New Delhi citizens lived in overcrowded slums with unreliable electricity and water supplies.

Even the criminal fraternity got in on the act. An opportunist thief named Dharmendar was arrested wearing a monkey mask "so that everyone would think he is yet another monkey-man at work and be scared of touching him". Dharmendar was lucky that it was the police who caught him, for vigilante groups armed with clubs and torches patrolled the streets after dark - even stopping and searching vehicles in their relentless quest for the Monkey Man.

Meanwhile, a group of Hindu priests were engaged in a more spiritual form of combat with the creature. "To rid the people of Delhi from the menace of this mysterious monkey-man, we will hold a freedom-from-monkey-man prayer," they announced.

The hysteria threatened to get out of control. A pregnant woman fell to her death down a staircase after hearing neighbours yell that the Monkey Man was coming. Several other residents suffered minor injuries during similar panics. The police drafted in extra men to patrol the affected areas and assembled a panel of forensic, medical and psychological experts to conduct a formal investigation into the sightings.

The Expert's Verdict

The panel concluded that the Monkey Man was no more that a figment of the residents' fevered imaginations. They believed that 90% of injuries reported were either accidentally self-inflicted or else caused by rats, cats or feral monkeys. The psychologists identified "stress, psychiatric disorders, alcohol-related illnesses and mental retardation of the people," as key factors contributing to the hysteria.

"Forensic experts who visited the sites where the attacks had allegedly taken place failed to come up with any clues," stated Police Commissioner Suresh Roy. "People started imagining things and rumour mongering added fuel to fire. The number of phone calls came down drastically after the police started patrolling the affected areas. The last call the police received was on the 20th of May."

The Monkey Man leaves Town

The local press (perhaps in penance for their role in fuelling the hysteria) published a bizarre report claiming that the Monkey Man had been seen boarding an airliner bound for Moscow. Whether because of this report, the findings of the expert panel, the priests' prayer, or the calming presence of the extra police patrols, life in New Delhi was back to normal by the end of May.

Or then again, perhaps the Monkey Man had simply moved to fresh pastures...

Sources

Article researched from numerous web sources, including CNN.com, Salon.com, StrangeMag.com, Rediff.com, BBC News and UFO Roundup.

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