Judges at India’s busiest courthouse have ordered New Delhi’s municipal authorities to rid the bustling complex of monkeys or face serious action.
Judges at Tis Hazari courthouse ordered the corporation to respond to a petition filed by a lawyer and shoo away the monkeys within a month from the three-storey complex which houses scores of courtrooms, The Hindustan Times reported Wednesday.
“If you cannot catch the monkeys then you shut down the institution,” judges Vijender Jain and Rekha Sharma told the municipal body in a ruling delivered on Tuesday after lawyers complained it was impossible to work alongside the monkeys.
Lawyer Nirmal Chopra in his petition complained of random attacks by bands of rhesus macaque monkeys on employees, lawyers and their clients at Tis Hazari which handles hundreds of thousands of trials every year.
The municipal body employs monkey-catchers but has so far failed to trap monkeys marauding through India’s British-built presidential palace and adjacent offices of the prime minister and various ministries.
The military in 2003 recruited two lemurs to keep monkeys out of the defence ministry, which is fortified with mesh windows and grilled doors.
Experts estimate New Delhi’s monkey population exceeds 20 000. Hindus revere them as a living link to the deity Hanuman, a monkey god who symbolises strength. – AFP