Rats Blamed for Missing Weed in India
Police in India blame rats for destroying hundreds of pounds of weed confiscated from dealers and stored in police stations. As the case was brought to court, the police were asked to produce evidence about the unusual suspect.
The cat indeed ate the homework. And now it might be possible that the mice ate those missing bags of weed, too.
A judge in a court in the north-central Uttar Pradesh state reportedly cited three cases in which rodents destroyed cannabis.
According to the BBC, Judge Sanjay Chaudhary said in an order that when the court asked the police to produce the seized drug as evidence, it was told that rats had destroyed 400 pounds of marijuana.
In another case involving 850 pounds of cannabis, the police filed a report that said "some" of the seized amount was "eaten up by the rats."
Judge Chaudhary also said additional 1500 pounds of weed captured by the police "was under danger of infestation by rats," where it's stored in police stations in the Mathura district.
"Rats are tiny animals and they have no fear of the police. It's difficult to protect the drug from them," the court said.
Since the police cannot deal with the rats problem because they are "too small," one recommendation has been to auction the seized stash to research labs and medicine companies, with the proceedings going to the government.
Could it be possible that the rats were really after the weed?
A senior police official in Mathura district told local reporters that some of the seized drug stored in the police was "damaged due to heavy rains" and not by mice. So, the rodents might be innocent after all.
Anyway, this is not the first time when rats are brought up as weed munching suspects. In 2018, Argentinian police also blamed rodents for half a ton of weed that went missing from a police warehouse. Unfortunately for the police officers, they lost their jobs because nobody believed rats could confuse such a vast amount of weed with food.
It's not the first time the Indian police points the finger to rats for missing substances either. In 2017, officers from the eastern state of Bihar blamed mice for consuming thousands of liters of seized alcohol, a year after a ban on liquor was introduced in that state.
Earlier this year, Indian authorities burned around 200 tons of seized weed.
S
Stephen Andrews
