New Delhi Letter: Judges at one of India's busiest courthouses in New Delhi have ordered the capital's municipal authorities to rid the bustling complex of monkeys or face serious action.
"If you cannot catch the monkeys then shut down the institution," judges Vijender Jain and Rekha Sharma warned the Delhi Municipal Corporation in a ruling yesterday after lawyers complained it was impossible to work alongside the band of monkeys who incessantly harassed them.
In his petition, lawyer Nirmal Chopra complained of random attacks on employees, lawyers and their clients by dozens of rhesus macaque monkeys at the Tis Hazari sessions court which daily handles hundreds of cases.
Past efforts by Delhi's municipality to annihilate the marauding animals that create havoc at numerous government offices and even hospitals, are hampered by the majority Hindu religious sentiment that associates monkeys with the god Hanuman, who helped Lord Rama defeat Ravana, the evil king of modern day Sri Lanka.
Millions of Indians visit Hanuman temples every Tuesday, and anyone trying to trap or scare off monkeys is frequently beaten up or chased away. Killing the animals is out of the question.
Novel methods of chasing away the animals with ultra high frequency loudspeakers, deporting them to neighbouring states or transporting them to India's only monkey jail in Patiala, 350km north of Delhi, have failed.
Nobody wants the monkeys - they have enough of their own.
Hiring "Rambo", a huge and fierce-looking monkey specially trained to rid the offices of the federal ministries of Health and Urban Development of marauding monkeys, proved successful for a few months some time ago, considerably easing the movement of terrified employees.
But peace was short-lived: the monkeys banded together and saw off Rambo in several fierce encounters.
For nearly four decades monkeys have held sway in New Delhi's corridors of power and spread mayhem across the campus of the nearby All India Institute of Medical Sciences, India's flagship research institution.
Powerful policy makers and their equally influential assistants walk warily down passageways in the north and south blocks that house, amongst others, the prime minister's office and the defence and home ministries, for fear of being set upon by monkeys concealed in niches in the imposing sandstone buildings built by the colonial administration.
The monkeys even made their presence felt during a news conference with US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld near the army chief's office two years ago, by hanging from window ledges and screeching at the speechless gathering below.
"We are constantly fighting a see-saw battle against monkeys," a senior military official admitted.
"For the moment we seem to be on top, but the scales will no doubt tilt in their favour," he added.
"It's a big problem, especially in the evening," a defence ministry spokesman said. Monkeys break into offices at night and paw through the files looking for food, and those working late have to be careful when they move around the building in the dark.
The offices of India's chief of army staff who heads the world's third-largest and nuclear-armed military force are barricaded against monkeys. Tough wire meshing stretches across the windows in the building.
A former army chief talking of nuclear war was forced to pause after monkeys began banging loudly on the roof above him, drowning out his gravely voice.
