Jump to content
IndiaDivine.org
Sign in to follow this  
livingentity

Monkey-man: Making sense of the fear psychosis

Rate this topic

Recommended Posts

NDTV NEWS:

 

Monkey-man: Making sense of the fear psychosis

Vikram Chandra and Arnab Goswami

 

The seemingly paranormal phenomenon of the “monkey-man” has evoked considerable paranoia in the capital. There have reportedly been numerous sightings and they all have a few things in common -- the “creature” is believed to be covered with black hair and has sharp metal-like claws, which he uses to attack his victims, who end up with minor gashes.

 

NDTV spoke to Suresh Roy, Joint Commissioner of Police and Professor Ashis Nandy, a well-known sociologist to make sense of the fear psychosis that the episodes have precipitated.

 

 

What sort of evidence have the police been able to gather till now? There has been confusion -- is it a gang of men, is it an animal, is it one man? Mr Roy, what does the existing evidence point to?

 

 

Well, we are still trying to delve into it. But going by the revelations of the people who have been affected and also the experts consulted, it is veering around the fact that the attacks are not made by a monkey or an animal for that matter. It is veering towards some human being creating some kind of mischief. Whatever he is carrying is not capable of causing death to anyone. It is not a very harmful instrument because he is carrying something by which he touches a person and then that person becomes a little unconscious and thereafter, he goes off.

 

 

Are we are talking about one person here because last evening there were a number of calls reported, a number of sightings of the monkey-men? Of course many of them have turned to be hoaxes. But how does one explain the simultaneous attacks been reported, Mr Roy?

 

 

Exactly, that is why I say that it is not one person doing this job. There are a number of persons involved in it because two days earlier, we had only east and north-east Delhi involved. But later on, it caught up in south Delhi also. So, it is not the job of one person as such. Definitely, more people are involved.

 

 

So it’s not actually a monkey or a monkey-man, Mr Roy. You are saying it’s a gang of monkey-men, if you can call it like that?

 

 

There is a possibility that it could be some animal. But experts believe that animals like monkeys won’t behave in this fashion. It is quite abnormal to have a monkey of five feet height.

 

 

Professor Nandy, what’s your take on it, is it possibly a kind of Lord-Ganesha-drinking-milk-kind-of-story we are dealing with?

 

 

Yes, partly. I think in contemporary life there are two factors, which have contributed to this kind of growth of panic. One is the fact that there is very little magic or irrationality left in contemporary life and people are looking for it. There is a need for it. There is a set of people who wants something magical, something exotic, something esoteric, something eye-catching.

 

 

Professor, are you saying that there actually haven’t been any attacks and this is entirely mass hysteria?

 

 

No, I am saying that there might have been attacks, maybe attacks by different groups of persons for different causes. People have somehow felt that the causes, the incidents are all interconnected. But I have not given the second part of the story. That will perhaps answer your question better. Another development in our lives is that evil now has become very fuzzy, very chaotic and abstract. Evil doesn’t have a concrete presence in the form in which it was there in the traditional religious belief systems. For example, even if you go to a Ram Lila, the villain is incarnated in the character of Ravana. You don’t have this kind of concretised evil. So you are always looking for a concrete personification or representation of evil. You sense around for it. You are unhappy, you are tensed, you are stressed for various reasons. You feel that you are subjected to certain kinds of violence all around you and you would like a concrete source of that violence.

 

 

So, what you are saying, in affect, is that when people, especially in east Delhi are talking about the monkey-man, they believe that there is a monkey-man around because they want to believe in it. There is, of course, a pattern now, Everybody seems to have almost the same physical description of what the monkey-man looked liked. So, is it a rumour gone wild, Mr. Roy?

 

 

Well, I think there is truth in what you say that people are willy-nilly scared of this kind of thing happening. I am told that some people also have dreams -- you know, when they go to bathe they feel that somebody is just looking at them. So they feel scared and ring up the police. So there is a kind of terror element involved in that.

 

 

Of course, one tangible evidence, if we can call it that, would be the actual injuries, which some people have received. Have you had any sort of medical check-up on those? What are those injuries, are they self-inflicted, are they metal, are they animal teeth. What caused those injuries?

 

 

We have consulted doctors on that. There are two kinds of theories floating on that. Some injuries they are opining are not caused by any human element as such and one of the injuries, it has been said that it could be an animal. But going by the whole analysis of the situation and the kind of investigation we have done -- the people say that the fellow will go about so many floors up and immediately when it comes in contact with a particular person, the person faints and falls down. And in the mean time, he jumps and goes to some other place...

 

 

So there is an element of fantasy to all of it?

 

 

It is just not possible for an animal to rise to different floors and from there go and attack and then vanish. So definitely, to my understanding, of the problem, it is the handiwork of some kind of gang operating who is trying to create some chaos but at same time, the gang is not doing any big harm because all the victims have only suffered minor injuries.

 

 

Professor Nandy, I would just like you to comment on the way the international media is picking on the story. They say that after the Kumbh Mela and the earthquake, this is the first time that India is back there on the front page of many newspapers in the West. Are you surprised with that?

 

 

Yes and no. I think there is a compact between the people who are getting panicky, the monkey-man here and the newspapers, which are looking for panicky people who are threatened by or overwhelmed by the fear of the unnatural and the supernatural. So that’s why it’s a compact. That’s not surprising at all and had it not been for the injuries, I would have said, sit back, relax and enjoy your monkey-man.

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest guest

<h3>Monkey-man attack: 12 arrested for making hoax calls</h3>

HT Correspondent

(New Delhi, May 19)

 

DELHI POLICE arrested 12 persons over the past 24 hours on charges of having made false calls to the Police

Control Room (PCR) on the monkey-man menace. They include a Home Guard, Kishen Kumar (32), who was

arrested from the Kasturba Nagar locality in East Delhi.

 

While seven of them were arrested from East Delhi, the rest were residents of North-East district of the Capital.

 

The PCR received 48 calls during this period. Of these only eight were found to be 'genuine.' In these cases, the

affected party did show injuries on their body to support their claim of having being attacked.

 

Ashu (19), a Shakarpur resident claimed that a monkey had scratched on left his hand. On closer examination

the doctors, however, ruled that the injuries appeared to be self-inflicted.

 

Another fake call was made by Vinod Mehra (53) of Krishna nagar at 1:30 am. He claimed that the monkey-man

had taken away his mobile phone. But police found him drunk.

 

Meanwhile, the police in South Delhi areas have asked all the shopkeepers trading in masks, gloves or any other

articles that remotely connect with a 'monkeyman' sighting to maintain a register of the sales.

 

The idea, say policemen, is to provide a deterrent to possible mischief mongers.

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest guest

<h3>Not one DNA test done to check if it’s really a monkey</h3>

 

Atir Khan

 

New Delhi, May 19: THE city has no facility to conduct DNA tests

on the wounds reportedly inflicted by the monkey-man. Experts say

that a simple forensic test can give some direction to investigations but

DNA tests will have the final say.

 

Till the time the authorities carry out these tests, the Delhi Police will

have to run around in circles, answering hundreds of panic calls, as

they can’t afford to take them lightly.

 

ACP Rajeev Ranjan says, ‘‘We have consulted doctors. They say

that the injuries are either simple blunt or simple sharp, which are not

caused by an animal. This is not of much help.’’ A forensic expert, on

the other hand, proffers: ‘‘If the traces of saliva is found, it can be

tested. Then we can ascertain whether it is a human bite, a monkey

bite or any other kind of bite.’’

 

There are a lot of similarities between human and monkey saliva. So

precision tests are required. ‘‘With the help of DNA fingerprinting

sequencer, the foreign material on a body could be identified with

precision. It is a high-tech, sensitive test.’’

 

For such tests the samples have to be either sent to Hyderabad or

Calcutta. A Rs 2-crore DNA facility is being set up at the Forensic

Science Laboratory in Malviya Nagar.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You are posting as a guest. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
Sign in to follow this  

×
×
  • Create New...