Villagers dress up as bears to scare off marauding monkeys in rural north India

Two youths in north India had an innovative idea to save fellow villagers from aggressive monkeys in their area terrorising them - by dressing up and pretending to be wild bears.

Salim and Ramkumar, who hail from Sikandarpur village in Shahjahanpur, Uttar Pradesh, patrol the area for 2-3 hours daily to scare off wild monkeys.

According to villagers, monkeys are big problem for them as they bite and steal their belongings, prompting the people to request forest department assistance, but to no avail.

So they themselves decided to do something and collected money to make full-body bear costumes.

According to Salim: "Our idea is getting results, when monkeys see us they get scared and run away.

We will keep roaming in bear dress until we scare off all monkeys from the village."