It's no monkey business: HC seeks answers from govts on simian crisis

Time of India

16-05-2025

Ghaziabad: A college student from Sanjay Nagar got multiple stitches after she was attacked by a monkey earlier this year. Another woman, a Raj Nagar resident, spent over Rs 1 lakh to repair the electrical wiring after a group of monkeys raided her house when she went to meet her son in the US last Dec.
Man-monkey conflicts are many and frequent in Delhi-NCR. In 2014, New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) had to hire 40 men in ape suits to drive away monkeys from the parliament complex—a decision that inspired an OTT series 'Mamla Legal Hai'. But 11 years later, nothing has changed, except for the simian population.
On May 6,
Allahabad high court
issued notices to
Animal Welfare
Board of India, ministry of environment, forest and climate change, UP govt and others on the rising population of monkeys, increasing
man-monkey conflict
, hunger and loss of food to monkeys, their starvation and cruel/inhuman conditions the monkeys are living in.
The court directed the central and state govts to explain by July 10 what are the steps in place to deal with monkey menace and what action plan is proposed in that regard.
The division bench comprising chief justice Arun Bhansali and justice Kshitij Shailendra also issued notices to the UP state animal welfare board, Ghaziabad district magistrate, GMC, nagar palika parishads of Loni, Modinagar, Muradnagar, Khoda Makanpur, society for prevention of cruelty to animals and Ghaziabad Development Authority (GDA) in the matter.
It was hearing a PIL filed by BTech student Prajakta Singhal and social worker Vineet Sharma, both from Ghaziabad, seeking directions for preparing an urgent action plan, infirmaries, veterinary care centres, transport and rescue vans, provisions of food and setting up a 24X7 grievance helpline portal to tackle money menace. It also sought a direction to the govt agencies to capture and relocate monkeys to forests or forest-like setup in Ghaziabad.
Sharma said
monkey attacks
increase during summer when there is a dearth of food and water in the habitats where they usually live. "People can't go for walks in parks, and children cannot play in school playgrounds out of fear of being attacked by monkeys," Sharma said.
The petitioners said repeated appeals to the local municipal bodies and animal welfare board went unheard, prompting them to seek judicial intervention. Appearing for the petitioners, counsel Akash Vashishtha said there was an urgent need to acknowledge the issue as a problem, and only then could certain SOPs be framed.
"Through the petition, we extended suggestions about what needs to be done for the welfare of monkeys who are forced to raid human habitations in the absence of food and water," he said.
Anirban Roy, a research scholar at Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), who studied man-animal conflict, said that two main reasons contribute to the exploding population of monkeys. "On one hand, they are rarely hunted in the wild because even apex predators are not avid climbers.
On the other hand, when they venture into human settlements, instead of being driven away, they are fed and revered for socio-religious sentiments," he said.
Another problem is the absence of census and population figures, which makes it difficult for local authorities to come up with any plan. Roy explains that since monkeys are not on the IUCN list of endangered species, there is no mechanism for their census over the years.