Rail officials put up langur posters in UP's Kanpur station to scare away monkeys

Kanpur (Uttar Pradesh), March 23 The officials at the Kanpur Central Railway Station have put up posters and placed giant cut-outs of langurs at major sites to scare monkeys away.

Public relation officer NCR, Amit Kumar Singh, said that the poster and cut-out experiment, if successful, will be implemented across other railway stations of the North Central Railway (NCR) division.

Monkeys have been a major cause of concern because of several attacks in the recent past. Some of them have proved fatal as well.

"We have implemented it at Kanpur Central on an experimental basis," he said and added, "Along with this, speakers have also been installed near the posters and cut-outs so that the sounds of langurs can also be heard. It has been done to scare the monkeys. In North Central Railway, this experiment has been started at the Central station which will run till April 30. If the experiment is successful, it will be implemented at Panki station and other stations."

A senior railway official meanwhile said, "This is a problem caused by passengers, who feed leftover food to sim. When the monkeys do not get food, they turn aggressive and attack the passengers."

"The monkeys attack children, snatch their food, and often they also pick up bags and run away," he said.

Railway vendors also complained that they could not carry packets of chips or other packages of food items as sim would snatch them as well.