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[Dan Weeks <danimal AT danimal.org>]

India panicked by 'Monkey Man' attacks

NEW DELHI (AP) - Mass hysteria is sweeping across India's capital after
reports of a superpowered monkey man, with hairy body and sharp metal
claws, attacking people as they sleep on their roofs in the sweltering
heat.

According to police reports, the mysterious creature has been blamed for
injuries to 100 people over the past month in and around New Delhi, half
of them on last night. Thousands of people are having sleepless nights.

Newspapers carry daily reports of attacks over such a widespread area
that the ''monkey man'' would have to be superhuman to be in so many
places at once.

The creature is the main topic of conversation in shops and servants
quarters, with maids weeping as they trade tales of sightings. People
are sleeping in groups for greater protection.

As the cry goes up in the night in one neighbourhood, people sleeping
atop adjacent houses begin screaming. Some jump from two-storey
buildings, fracturing their bones as they escape the phantom in the
darkness.

Fifty such attacks were reported last night and 16 people were injured,
the Delhi police control room said today. One man was killed when he
jumped off the roof of his house during a purported attack, screaming,
''The monkey has come!''

Several people suffered multiple fractures in such jumps.

''People are in a state of terror,'' said Suresh Roy, New Delhi's joint
commissioner of police. ''This creature attacks people who sleep on
rooftops or out in the open. It strikes when there is a power cut in the
area,'' leaving the neighbourhood in total darkness.

An estimated 1,000 police were set to patrol the streets in New Delhi on
tonight.

But the police are not sure what they are looking for: a man or a monkey
or something else. Is it more than one attacker?

Some witnesses have made the case more difficult: They say the creature
turns invisible.

Deepali Kumari, 35, who works as a housemaid in the industrial township
of Noida adjoining New Delhi, huddled with hundreds of her terrified
neighbours through last night after what she said was an attack by a
monkey man.

''A pregnant woman was sleeping with her husband. She started screaming
when she saw the monkey man. He scratched her husband,'' Kumari said
with tears in her eyes. ''Then the woman started running, but he twisted
her ear and put his claws inside it.''

Most witnesses describe an attacker about 1.2 metres in height, with a
dark face, large eyes, sharp claws, a human-like body, that can move
swiftly, and jump up to six metres. Some say it wears a helmet or a
mask. Others claim they saw it jumping down several stories after the
attacks.

''It has three buttons on its chest. One makes it turn into a monkey,
the second gives it extra strength, the third makes it invisible,'' said
Kumari, the housemaid. ''He touches a lock and it breaks. But he is
afraid of the light.''

Only one man claims to have caught the creature. But his neighbours said
they saw it pick the captor up and throw him down before escaping.

Police in Ghaziabad, a city neighbouring New Delhi, announced on
yesterday a reward of 5,000 rupees ($165) for anyone who could capture
the creature on film.

Similar panic gripped Latin America in the late 1990s, when there were
reports of a mysterious, vampire like beast that sucked the blood of
livestock and was named the Chupacabra, which in Spanish means
goatsucker.

In India, the mass hysteria is similar to the frenzy whipped up across a
large part of India in 1996, when statues of the Hindu deity Ganesha
were believed to have mysteriously consumed milk.

On a single day, hundreds of thousands of devout said they saw spoonfuls
of milk disappear as they placed them on the statue's lips.

''Whatever this is, it is succeeding in its attempts to feed on mass
hysteria,'' clinical psychologist Neelima Misra said of the reported
monkey man attacks. ''The victims are all poor, uneducated, insecure
people who are not using logic, just letting their fears expand their
imagination.''

''If that's what the monkey man wanted to do, he's getting there,'' she
said.


-- 
dan weeks - codemonkey

Before you criticize a man you should walk a mile in his shoes.  
That way you are a mile away from him and you have his shoes.