A monkey sparked a dash for cash in a northern Indian town when
he showered banknotes from a rooftop.
Passersby in the hill town of Shimla spotted the monkey with a
bundle of notes on Sunday after it broke into a construction site
in search of food.
Finding nothing to munch on, it stole 10,000 rupees ($165) that
a contractor had planned to pay his labourers, according to the
Amar Ujala newspaper.
"I was returning from the nearby temple when I suddenly saw some
people looking up at currency notes flying. I noticed a monkey was
dropping them from a tree," resident Ashok Kumar told AFP.
"I also joined the crowd and picked up two notes of 100 rupees
($1.65) each."
Workers at the construction site tried in vain to catch the
thieving primate, who playfully tossed down money from a rooftop
before continuing the handouts from a tree, with an eager crowd
gathering to catch the cash for nearly an hour.
Shimla, capital of the mountainous state of Himachal Pradesh,
has a ballooning monkey population and wildlife officials say the
animals often harass residents and tourists.
Monkeys are revered in Hindu-majority India -- but the animals
can be a menace, trashing gardens, offices and residences and even
attacking people for food.
The Indian government has hired 40 "monkey men" tasked with
mimicking the screeches and hoots of aggressive monkeys in a bid to
keep the animals at bay.
This is not the first time a monkey has played Robin Hood in
Shimla. In February, a monkey stole a bag of cash and showered it
over a crowded street in the town, to the delight of passersby.
