Rats destroy £13,300 worth of notes in Indian ATM

Police in India’s eastern Assam state have blamed rats for eating away at rupee banknotes worth £13,300 inside an ATM.

In the course of their investigations, police recovered a dead rodent from the scene of crime in the small town of Sijuguri in Tinsukhia district.

Tinsukhia police told The Hindustan Times on Tuesday that the dead rat was one of ‘numerous’ other ‘culprits’ who had entered the ATM though a hole meant for wiring and spent several days chewing and shredding 2,000Rs and 500Rs notes.

Local police superintendent Prakash Sonowal said they had received a complaint last week from the government owned State Bank of India that one of their ATMs had been malfunctioning since late May and they suspected foul play.

Bank officials claimed that the machine was not dispensing cash, even though it had been replenished late last month with the equivalent of £33,417.

Police said once the failing ATM was forced open by a specialist vault-cutting unit, they discovered the dead rat lying among the debris of destroyed notes, and ruled out any human involvement in the ‘crime’.

Bank officials also recovered undamaged notes worth around £19,000, untouched by the rats.  

This is not the first time Indian police have come up against rats.

They have been known to create problems with their drunk and disorderly behaviour in several police stations in New Delhi, by drinking moonshine seized by the police and then attacking everyone in sight, even the cats kept to eradicate them.

Police officers in some of the city’s outlying areas, where moonshine is a problem, said these alcoholic rats" also created a‘credibility’ problem for them as they were unable to produce samples of the seized illicit liquor in court as evidence.

"If we tell the judge its been consumed by rats, he laughs at us and holds us in contempt," said one police station in-charge in East Delhi plagued by the alcohol-loving rats, declining to be named. 

He said there had been instances when the officer in charge of the evidence room had been wrongfully suspended on charges of consuming or selling the moonshine, but in most instances he was the innocent victim of a "frame up" by drunken rats.   

Police stations have tried various techniques to tackle the drunk mice, but to little effect.

One at Jafarpur Kalan in west Delhi had kept a fierce cat, but after a few active months it got bored with chasing and killing rats, and began either ignored them or fighting them for fun.