Rats have been accused of eating hundreds of pounds of marijuana seized from drug dealers and stored by police in northern India.
“Rats are small animals and they are not afraid of the police,” said a court in the city of Mathura in the state of Uttar Pradesh, after hearing that local police had failed to provide almost 200 kilograms of confiscated cannabis that were supposed to be presented as evidence. in a recent case.
Court documents said the police were asked to provide 386 kilograms of marijuana, but the prosecution told the court that more than 700 kilograms stored at various stations in Mathura could be affected by the rat infestation.
And this was not – supposedly – the first time rats had attacked. The judge who heard the case said Mathura Police blamed the rodents for destroying a total of more than 500 kilograms of marijuana which had been seized in various cases and stored at the Shergarh City Highway Police Station.
The court then established guidelines for police to auction off or dispose of the marijuana.
“There is a rat threat in almost every police station. Therefore, necessary arrangements need to be made to protect marijuana that has been confiscated,” the court document said.
However, reports about the exact sequence of events that followed the alleged consumption of cannabis by the rats seem a little hazy.
After the court case, Mathura City Police Superintendent Martand Prakash Singh told CNN that cannabis was “destroyed by rains and floods” and not by rats.
“There was no reference to rats in the (report submitted to the court)…the police only mentioned that the seized marijuana was destroyed by the rains and floods,” he said.
If the rats are guilty of the charge, they might be relaxing right now. A 2016 study from the University of British Columbia found that the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana made lab rats lazy.
The researchers trained 29 rats to perform an experiment, in which the rodents had to choose between a simple or a more difficult task to earn treats.
The mice typically chose the hardest – and most rewarding – task, but after being given marijuana, the same mice chose the easiest task.
Source: CNN Brasil
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