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CRIME: MONKEY MAN
Mischiefmakers Behind The Attacks
As
imagination has been heightened by the onslaught of genuine trauma and
fear, the descriptions of the Monkey Man have become increasingly graphic.
But hard evidence has been hard to find, even in the tragic case of Suman.
Sub-inspector Manvendra Singh of the New Ashok police station was the
first on the scene of Suman's death. He says, "There were no claw
marks on her body. She died due to a head injury." Adds Gyan Singh,
the station house officer of the police station: "All the alleged
victims were examined by doctors. They suffered bruises and scratches
when they fell or brushed against walls, cots, and beds while trying to
escape, but there were no claw marks. The entire Monkey Man drama is a
prank." The local police believe, as do their counterparts in other
affected districts, that the attacks are the work of mischiefmakers on
the prowl using a device that emits a whistling sound or a "scream".
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| JOKE GONE WRONG: Residents at the home of
a woman who jumped to her death. |
Other victims of attacks have given graphic accounts
but at closer inspection, their stories stand on thin ground. Rekha Das,
the wife of rickshaw puller Nimai Das, and a resident of the slums of
Noida's Sector 9, says she saw the Monkey Man. In the early hours of May
15, the creature apparently flew through a hole (about 1 ft in diameter)
through her wall. "It had the face of a monkey and the eyes of a
cat. It flew towards me," she said. Das claims her forehead and fingers
were bitten, while the Monkey Man in one sweep of his clawed fingers extracted
four teeth from her husband's mouth. The mysterious creature then flew
out as silently as it had winged its way in.
Dr S.K. Mondol, who attended to the Das couple,
confirmed the presence of bite marks on Rekha's fingers and forehead.
But the loopholes persist. To enter the Das
household, the Monkey Man would have first had to fly to the wall as there
is no platform close by from where it could launch itself. The police,
quite rightly, refuse to accept the existence of a winged simian and have
a more prosaic explanation for the bite marks: perhaps Nimai Das returned
home drunk, grappled and fought with his wife, and conveniently blamed
the results on the newsworthy Monkey Man. It doesn't quite explain the
missing teeth though.
Scepticism aside, the conspiracy theories have
grown as quickly as the panic. A fatigued Delhi Police, which was forced
to put 24 east Delhi police stations on "high alert", has blamed
Pakistan's ISI for "plotting to wear away the force". The Intelligence
Bureau (IB) offers the most plausible explanation. It has warned the Union
Government that "people could be settling personal scores under the
garb of the Monkey Man menace". Asks an IB official: "Why should
a criminal merely scratch people? He would loot or kill." Sanal Edamaruku,
an investigator of the paranormal at the Delhi-based Indian Rationalist
Association dismisses the Monkey Man conundrum as "mass delusion,
a group behaviour based on pseudologia fantastica".
The scare has taken a considerable toll on a
law enforcement machinery already grappling with bomb scares and the demands
of various levels of security in the capital. Since last week, 55 Ashok
Nagar policemen have been employed in "intensive patrolling"
nightly. They use a Maruti Gypsy, four Maruti vans and two motorcycles
for transport, beam torches on particularly dark rooftops, and keep a
close watch on "unnatural movements in the dark".
In neighbouring Noida, the situation is no different.
Sector 20 police station, which covers 31 sectors with a population of
one lakh, has, since the first attack, received between 25 and 30 rescue
calls every night. The callers say that the Monkey Man has struck and
disappeared, and invariably someone comes forward with scratch marks as
proof.
Within three days, Delhi's Monkey Man has grabbed
headlines. A popular television channel has deployed eight camera crews
at key locations and Delhi police is offering Rs 50,000 for the creature's
capture. If indeed it is a single individual and not a group of roving
copycat troublemakers. As panic escalates, and the stakes increase, the
Monkey Man remains the missing link.
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