India as rogue primate chases a woman off a roof to her death while she was hanging out washing

A 45-year-old woman has died after she was chased off her roof by a monkey in the latest fatal primate attack in India.

Jayanti Swain was hanging up her washing when a monkey went after her in the Jajpur district of Odisha on the eastern coast.

She panicked and tried to get away but was found lying on the ground outside by her family members who heard her shrieks. She was taken to the local hospital and declared dead.

Villagers claim that monkeys have been a scourge on the populace for the last few months and forest officials are not doing enough to help, The New Indian Express reported.

As well as destroying crops the monkeys have become more aggressive to people.

The latest fatality, on January 3, comes after a recent spate of monkey-related deaths in the country, including a four-month-old baby in November.

One of the primates picked up a stone and dropped it down from a terrace onto the child in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh state.

And last month in the same state in the city of Mathura, a crazed monkey attacked 100 people in 10 days.

In May last year a monkey killed a 60-year-old man and injured nine others after going on the rampage through a town in central India.

Last October a 12-day-old Indian boy was snatched from his mother and killed by a monkey on the outskirts of Agra.

Police have experimented with using slingshots to take aim at the monkeys, hoping they would be scared off merely by the sight of them.

And over the summer Almora city in northern India announced that it was going to sterilise 1,000 monkeys.