Monkeys to be put on the pill in India

India is planning to put its rising population of primates on the pill to tackle the growing "monkey menace" in its towns and cities, government wildlife officials have confirmed.

Vasectomies and sterilisation programmes are also being developed as part of a broader plan to curb the chaos being caused by troupes of marauding monkeys as urban India expands into their traditional forests.

Thousands of red-bottomed Rhesus Macaques or Bhandar monkeys are the scourge of New Delhi, where they roam through government buildings, chew Internet cables, bite the unwary carrying food and steal from people's homes.

Indian officials are exploring ways to administer the contraceptives and the likely impact of the drugs on primate behaviour before pressing ahead. One official said a mixed approach is likely to be adopted in Uttarakhand, in the Himalayan foothills where thousands of monkeys patrol the main roads and terrorise people in the hill towns.

Monkeys that can be caught will be sterilised while oral contraceptives will be put in food left for those primates that remain at large.

Source: The Telegraph

The show must go on! Guest marries bride after groom no-shows

In what sounds like the plot of a Bollywood musical, The Times of India reports that a 30-year-old man who came to witness a wedding ended up marrying the bride himself in what the paper describes as 'a kind gesture as the bridegroom-to-be failed to turn up to tie the knot on Wednesday.'

The blushing bride Ponradha, 23, was supposed to marry  Sithiraivelu, 35, but he reportedly skipped out after quarreling with his in-laws-to-be on Monday. Apparently this wasn't the first time he'd gone missing after an argument with them, as the Times describes the family 'expecting him to come back as usual, [but] he did not return." Understandably,  "the bride's family went into a frenzy, as a stopped marriage would affect the girl's future."

"The news spread around the town of Lakshmimanagaram like a wildfire when Sivakumar, a relative of the bride [!] who had come to take part in the wedding, agreed to marry Ponradha after his relatives persuaded him to do so. The wedding then took place as per the schedule, much to the relief of the family."

Well, at least with this catch of hers the age difference is only 7 years as opposed to 12. Hopefully her new found husband is only a distant relative!

Two caught at airport trying to smuggle gold in rectum, shoes

Two Indian nationals attempting to smuggle gold worth from Sri Lanka to Singapore were caught by the customs officers at Colombo's Bandaranaike International Airport

According to media reports, 6 pieces of gold were concealed in one of the suspects rectum and 3 under the sole of his shoes while the other had concealed 6 pieces in the rectum and 2 under his feet.

The gold seized from the suspects weighed 3.75 lbs / 1.7 kg.

Ouch!

Decomposing body found on express train in India

It happened on the Jhelum Express:

A decomposed body was found in the second class reservation compartment of the Pune-Jammutavi Jhelum Express on Thursday evening when it arrived at the Pune railway station to depart for Jammu & Kashmir. The incident delayed the departure of the train for sometime.

The train arrived at the Pune station at around 5.20pm. Passengers who boarded the train complained of foul smell emanating from the compartment. Officials of the railway protection force (RPF) and government railway police (GRP) while inspecting the compartment found the body that appeared to be two-three days old.

Authorities are puzzled, of course:

Senior RPF officials said they were investigating how the body was not found, while the rakes* were being washed. "It is possible that the body was placed inside the rake after it was cleaned. It will then be a failure on the part of the Carriage and Wagon department, who are supposed to ensure that the SLR bogies are locked."

Another senior railway official, on condition of anonymity, said such incidences were far from rare. "We regularly recover bodies in trains originating from the city. Miscreants want to place such cases of murder or suicide into the railway police jurisdiction."

* Rake is a term used in some countries for 'train car.'