Marauding monkeys bring fear to historic Indian tourist haven

Thousands of monkeys are menacing the historic Indian city of Shimla, where sterilisations and illegal poisonings have failed to blunt their frequent attacks on tourists and farms.

During India's nationwide coronavirus lockdown, most of the macaques left the city for the countryside to look for food.

As restrictions have eased, they have returned to bully inhabitants and snatch grocery bags, and up to 50 troops of hungry monkeys now prowl the former colonial British summer escape in the Himalayan hills.

The city of 160,000 people has long been a major draw for tourists seeking to avoid India's searing summer heat, but the food waste they leave behind has become a magnet for the hungry simians.

Monkey menace: Many Sanjauli homes now have metal cages over their terraces and windows to keep out the invaders, who have even been known to steal from refrigerators.

Even tourists at the Jakhoo temple, which holds one of India's largest statues of the monkey god Hanuman, have had glasses and other shiny items stolen.

When not targeting humans, the estimated 130,000-plus monkeys in the state are stealing or destroying millions of dollars of fruit and crops each year from farms.

While Hindus consider monkeys sacred, the government has now declared the animals can be killed if they threaten property.

Official extermination campaigns are yet to be launched, but farmers have illegally poisoned hundreds of the animals.

In Shimla and other towns in the state, the authorities have sought to sterilise the monkeys in a bid to bring numbers down.

About 157,000 of the animals have been sterilised across Himachal Pradesh in recent years, in what one expert said was the "only way" to bring the problem under control. | Officials from the Forest Department of Shimla cover a cage with two monkeys inside caught from a residential area in Shimla.

Officials from the Forest Department of Shimla prepare to install a cage on a roadside to catch monkeys in Shimla.