New Delhi: Agra is dealing with a monkey problem that appears to have no end in sight. In a fresh incident, a Spanish tourist was on Monday bitten by monkeys on the Taj Mahal premises.
According to inputs, the monkey attacked the tourist while she was photographing one of the world's seven wonders. Previously, two foreigners and one Indian tourist were said to have been injured at the Taj Mahal in the span of last ten days.
As such incidents become a cause of concern for authorities, the ASI superintendent asked employees to carry sticks to scare away the violent animals. However, this measure is turning out to be insufficient to protect tourists as well as the Taj Mahal's caretaking staff from the menace.
For a long time, monkeys in Agra have been blamed for a number of attacks, sometimes fatal, on children and adults.
The Monkey Menace Is Not New In Taj Mahal Premises
Two tourists from Delhi were recently attacked by monkeys in August this year. A video of the victims shot by shopkeepers outside the monument went viral on social media. "One woman was bitten on the abdomen, while the other was bitten on the left leg. They left soon after without complaining," a report by the Times of India quoted a shopkeeper as saying.
The monkey menace has found coverage by global media platforms, with The New York Times reporting in 2019 that "outside the white marble facade of the imposing Taj Mahal, tourists are facing a menace: gangs of hungry, rosy-bottomed monkeys. They bite. They scratch. Occasionally, they kill. Now, Indian security guards are cracking down, taking to the streets of Agra, India, where the monument is, to scare off the animals. Their weapon of choice?”
One of the recent known fatal attacks by Monkeys was reported in 2018 wherein a monkey snatched a 12-day-old infant from the arms of his mother and killed the baby on the outskirts of Agra, as reported by India Today.