The #1 source for news about monkeys and apes

[Kiki Yablon <kyablon AT chicagoreader.com>]

http://outside.away.com/outside/culture/200902/monkey-problem-delhi-india-1.html

Too long to post in its entirety here, but here's the first page of six:
Howl
They've got a slight animal-control problem in 
Delhi, India: Thousands of wild rhesus monkeys, 
addled by the sprawl that's taking over their 
habitat, are dropping out of trees to steal food, 
chug booze, and murder prominent citizens. Did we 
mention that many of the victims believe these creatures are gods?

By James Vlahos

The cousin of the dead man told me not to go. He 
expressly forbade it. But I'd come all the way to 
India, and I wasn't going to leave without seeing 
the site of the accident­or, as most people 
regarded it, the scene of the crime. The Savita 
Vihar neighborhood of New Delhi, separated from 
the slums of Old Delhi by the Yamuna River, is 
typical of the modern, upscale residential 
colonies multiplying around the city. Two decades 
ago, eastern Delhi was mainly farmland and 
forest. But that had given way to gas stations, 
Nokia shops, and housing for millions of 
residents, many of them members of a burgeoning 
middle class periodically celebrated on the covers of Newsweek and Time.

My driver turned down a tree-lined lane. He drove 
slowly, me hunched paparazzo-like next to him 
with camera and notebook, until we parked 
opposite No. 59, a gated, three-story building of white stucco.

P.S. Bajwa, the dead man's cousin and the owner 
of a construction company, had met me an hour 
earlier inside an office tower his crew was 
building. Shouting over the shriek of a circular 
saw, he'd taken out a pencil and sketched what he 
thinks happened to his relative on the morning of October 20, 2007.

Now I pulled out the drawing and looked up at the 
house. I pictured Surinder Singh Bajwa emerging 
from double doors onto a second-story balcony to 
pick up his morning paper. He looks up, spots a 
gang of intruders coming his way, and, 
panic-stricken, grabs a stick to fight them off. 
He lunges forward and takes a mighty swing, but 
the intruders dart to safety. Bajwa is carried 
forward by the momentum of the attempted blow; he 
hits the balcony railing and tumbles over the 
side, plunging 13 feet and landing on his back. 
That's how he's found, face up in a pool of blood. A day later he is dead.

Twenty yards from the balcony stood a large 
billboard marked with slogans for the Indian 
People's Party. The face of Surinder Bajwa 
dominated one corner. He wore a Sikh's red 
turban, clipped beard, and upturned mustache and 
had a commanding gaze. Bajwa had been the deputy 
mayor of Delhi. That's one reason his death 
became internationally known. The other is that 
the intruders blamed for his death were monkeys. 
It didn't matter that they hadn't actually 
murdered Bajwa; to the public and media, they 
were to blame. MAYOR KILLED BY MONKEYS, one headline screamed.

P.S. Bajwa wanted me to stay away from the house 
because he feared I would disturb Surinder's 
widow. But he supported my investigating the 
issues behind his cousin's death. "The monkey 
menace is increasing every day," he said. "It must be stopped." . . .