AP International
'Monkey Man' Attacks Cause Hysteria
by HEMA SHUKLA
Associated Press Writer
NEW DELHI, India (AP) -- Police are blaming a
band of men in masks for what they call hysteria
among residents of New Delhi, who claim a
mysterious ''monkey man'' has been attacking people
late at night.
Police have received up to 50 sightings in one night of
the alleged attacker -- described by witnesses as a
4-foot tall creature with a hairy body and metal claws.
At one point, police ran short of vehicles to check on
the reports.
The hysteria has led to two deaths. A pregnant
woman sleeping on her rooftop terrace died Tuesday
night when she slipped running down the stairs as
neighbors screamed that the monkey man had struck,
the Statesman newspaper reported.
A man was killed Monday when he jumped off the
roof of his house screaming, ''The monkey has come!''
''It is nothing but mass hysteria,'' said Manoj Kumar
Lal, a deputy commissioner of police.
''It seems a group of people in masks are terrorizing
people,'' the Statesman quoted an unidentified police
officer as saying.
Police have blamed the panic on uneducated poor
people, many of them believers in the supernatural,
and the sweltering heat and darkness due to electricity
cuts.
Harassed police authorities in New Delhi have urged
the state-run power company to ensure uninterrupted
power supply from dawn to dusk so that panicked
residents would feel safer.
Recently residents of a New Delhi suburb caught and
beat up a 4-foot-tall wandering Hindu mystic, thinking
he was the simian terror, the Statesman newspaper
said.
He was handed over to police, and thousands
crowded outside the station for a glimpse of the
alleged monkey man, causing a near stampede.
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