The Monkey-man of Delhi (Kala Bandar), 2001

Spring 2001. A heat wave above 110°F lay over northern India. In the crowded eastern and northern districts of Delhi, and in the Uttar Pradesh towns of Ghaziabad and Noida, people slept on rooftops and terraces to escape it. Rolling power cuts left whole neighbourhoods in darkness.

The first sighting came on 5 April 2001. The early reports came from the suburbs of Ghaziabad. Around 10 May, the creature crossed into East and North-East Delhi. People called it the Kala Bandar. The black monkey.

Witnesses described it in pieces. Some said it was about four feet tall. Others said eight and muscular, with thick black hair, human legs and an ape-like face. They variously reported a metal helmet, a motorcycle helmet or dark glasses, as well as glowing red eyes, metal claws and three buttons on its chest. They said it could leap from building to building.

One resident claimed to have grabbed it. "It was a monkey alright, and about 4 foot tall, but as soon as I grabbed it, it turned itself into a cat with tawny, glowing eyes." A woman quoted by the Indian Express reported finger bites, and said her husband's teeth were knocked out by "a metallic hand".

Police received about 400 calls, and around 60 people reported injuries. The fear itself proved deadly. In Shakurpur, Ram Prakash jumped from the roof of a three-storey building and died on the spot. In Noida, an industrial worker woke on the night of 13 May to cries that the monkey man was attacking, jumped from a first-floor building and died. In East Delhi, a pregnant woman fell down the stairs from her terrace and died, while sources put the total toll at two, three, or perhaps four.

Joint Commissioner Suresh Roy said "events seem to be happening at different places at the same time". About 3,000 officers patrolled the East district. Police offered a ₹50,000 reward and released an artist's sketch. Vinod Yadav, 22, said: "I don't sleep at nights and now always keep a bamboo stave by my side."

On 19 June 2001, the police and forensic report came in. Forensic experts and psychiatrists called the monkeyman "a mere figment of the imagination of emotionally-weak people". They found no physical evidence at the scenes. Most injuries were superficial, possibly self-inflicted.

A medical board studied the victims. Its findings, published by S.K. Verma and D.K. Srivastava in 2003, judged the injuries accidental. Incidents had happened mainly at night, during power cuts. Sanal Edamaruku of the Indian Rationalist Association examined more than 40 claimants and concluded "all these injuries were self-inflicted".

Mass hysteria became the leading explanation. Benjamin Radford points to the heat, the darkness, poverty, heavy media attention, Delhi's real monkeys and the familiar image of the monkey god Hanuman. Others at the time blamed a Pakistani plot or an angry Hindu deity. Reports fell off sharply around 20 May, as the media lost interest and police threatened false callers with prosecution.

The Kala Bandar did not quite vanish. In mid-2002, four teenagers in monkey costumes were caught in Nizamuddin East. The creature lives on in the film Delhi-6 and the graphic novel Munkeeman, and in every later panic, from the muhnochwa of 2002 to the braid-chopping scare of 2017.