'Monkey man' spawns hysteria in New Delhi

Pawel Kopczynski, Reuters Indian woman Om Kali displays a wound in New Delhi on Wednesday. Kali said that she was attacked by an ape-like creature.

NEW DELHI, India (AP)  Police are blaming a band of men in masks for what they call hysteria among residents of New Delhi, who claim a mysterious "monkey man" has been attacking people late at night.

Police have received up to 50 sightings in one night of the alleged attacker  described by witnesses as a 4-foot tall creature with a hairy body and metal claws. At one point, police ran short of vehicles to check on the reports.

The hysteria has led to two deaths. A pregnant woman sleeping on her rooftop terrace died Tuesday night when she slipped running down the stairs as neighbors screamed that the monkey man had struck, the Statesman newspaper reported.

A man was killed Monday when he jumped off the roof of his house screaming, "The monkey has come!"

"It is nothing but mass hysteria," said Manoj Kumar Lal, a deputy commissioner of police.

"It seems a group of people in masks are terrorizing people," the Statesman quoted an unidentified police officer as saying.

Police have blamed the panic on uneducated poor people, many of them believers in the supernatural, and the sweltering heat and darkness due to electricity cuts.

Harassed police authorities in New Delhi have urged the state-run power company to ensure uninterrupted power supply from dawn to dusk so that panicked residents would feel safer.

Recently residents of a New Delhi suburb caught and beat up a 4-foot-tall wandering Hindu mystic, thinking he was the simian terror, the Statesman newspaper said.

He was handed over to police, and thousands crowded outside the station for a glimpse of the alleged monkey man, causing a near stampede.

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