Legislators call for end to monkey menace in Indian capital

Several legislators criticized the Indian government in Parliament on Wednesday for failing to control the growing number of marauding monkeys in the country's capital, a news report said.

Battalions of simians have been damaging trees, uprooting plants, snatching food from children and terrifying passers-by, the Press Trust of India news agency quoted K. Malaisamy of the opposition All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhgam as saying.

"In the name of protection of monkeys, we cannot afford to be silent spectators to this perennial problem," Malaisamy said in the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of Parliament, according to PTI.

As forest cover around New Delhi has declined, the city has struggled with a growing monkey population. Government buildings, temples and many residential neighbourhoods are overrun by hundreds of rhesus macaques.