According to authorities in India, nearly 200 kg of cannabis that had been confiscated from criminals and stored in police stations was consumed by rats.
A court was told that rodents occasionally ate the marijuana that was being preserved as evidence.
A statement read to the court said: “Rats are tiny animals and they have no fear of the police. It’s difficult to protect the drug from them.”
The judge cited three instances where rodents destroyed marijuana.
In a ruling, Judge Sanjay Chaudhary stated that when the court ordered the police to provide the marijuana they had confiscated as evidence, they claimed that the 195 kg of cannabis had been “destroyed” by rats.
Another instance involved 386kg of the drug, and the police said that “some” of it had been “eaten up by the rats.”
Also, around 700 kg of marijuana that the police had captured was lying in police stations in the Mathura district, according to Judge Chaudhary, and “all of it was in danger of rat infestation.”
The judge claimed that because the rats were “too small,” the police lacked the ability to handle the situation. He said that selling the medications at auction to research facilities and pharmaceutical companies, with the money going to the government, was the only way to safeguard the confiscated items from “such fearless mice.”
Eight police officers in Argentina were dismissed in 2018 after they accused rats of the disappearance of 500 kg of cannabis which was in police custody.
Experts, however, refuted the claim, stating that it was impossible that the animals would mistake the drug for food and “if a large group of mice had eaten it, a lot of corpses would have been found in the warehouse.”