They flit between thousands of visitors, grabbing something edible - and some of them are attacking people. Monkeys in front of the Taj Mahal are now a plague. Around the probably most famous tomb in the world, according to the newspaper "India Today", there was an accumulation of monkey attacks last year. Now the police want to better protect the tourists - and prepare themselves with slingshots.

The kittens are supposed to help the police fend off the monkeys, said Brij Bhushan, who is in charge of security at the Taj Mahal. The guards, however, had been instructed not to shoot the monkeys, but only to scare them away. "We have found that they are already frightened if they only see how we swing the doom," Bhushan told Reuters.

An estimated 10,000 monkeys live in the northern Indian city of Agra, around 500 to 700 specimens around the outskirts of the Taj Mahal. They are mainly there for food leftovers that tourists have to leave the security lock. Around 50 million of the animals live in the entire country and the loss of their natural habitat allows them to advance further and further into the cities.

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India: The monkeys are going

The animals seem to be increasingly aggressive. In 2016, according to the Indian government, in the capital New Delhi alone, nearly 1,900 people were bitten by monkeys. In autumn 2018, a girl was attacked and severely injured by rhesus monkeys at the Taj Mahal. In May, two French tourists were wounded by monkeys when they made selfies there.

Monkey killed twelve-day-old baby

In November, there was a particularly dramatic case in Agra: A monkey killed a twelve-day-old baby. It snatched the baby from the mother while she breastfeed, and dragged it over the roofs. In October, the Times of India reported on a 72-year-old victim of a monkey gang. The animals struck him with stones on his head and chest. He died in the hospital.

The daily newspaper "India Today" speaks of a "threat" in a November 2018 report. It quotes a member of parliament saying monkeys have turned into "terrorists". The administration of Agra has already spent 18.6 million rupees (about 230,000 euros) in order to control the monkey population in the area. But the measures have so far led to no noteworthy successes.

The goal was to catch the monkeys with cages and then sterilize them. But so far this has only been achieved with about 500 animals, as the newspaper reports. The population continues to grow strongly. Not only visitors would have to be afraid of them, writes the newspaper. The image of the Taj Mahal would also suffer.

Visitor numbers should be restricted

The monkey plague is not the only problem of the Taj Mahal. It also groans under a huge tourist rush. About eight million people visit the mausoleum each year - on public holidays it reaches up to 70,000 visitors. Last year, the Indian government announced it was restricting access for domestic visitors. The visit time should be limited to three hours.

This measure serves the preservation of the largest tourism attraction in the country, it said. "We must ensure the safety of the structure and its visitors, and managing the crowds will be a great challenge for us," said a member of India's Archeology Supervision (ASI), which manages the Taj Mahal.

The great mogul Shah Jahan had the Taj Mahal built of white marble in the 17th century as a tomb for his late wife Mumtaz Mahal. For years, the Taj Mahal has also been threatened by air pollution in India and needs to be cleaned regularly as the facade turns yellow.