THANJAVUR: A troop of monkeys entered the thatched-roof hut of a 70-year-old widow near Tiruvaiyaru on Tuesday and made away with a bag of cash, gold jewellery and eatables, robbing the woman of her life savings.
G Sarathambal lives alone in the hut at Kuthirai Koil Street in Veeramangudi near Tiruvaiyaru in Thanjavur district. On Tuesday afternoon, she was washing clothes in front of her hut when a troop of monkeys reportedly entered the house and took bananas and a bag of rice kept in a bucket.
Unfortunately, Sarathambal had kept her jewellery, weighing one sovereign, and Rs 25,000 in cash in that rice bag. She followed the monkeys which took their booty to the roof of the nearby Government Primary Health Centre (PHC), where it is said that they started eating the fruits and rice. Even as locals tried to retrieve the woman’s belongings from the monkeys, they fled, taking the bag with them. The search for the bag proved futile.
According to villagers, Sarathambal bought the jewellery from her savings from working in the fields and under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA). She had saved the money for any exigencies.
Having now lost her savings, she would be forced to take loans for any of emergency needs, including health care, villagers said. They have demanded that the monkeys, that frequently enter the village streets, be caught and let into forested areas.