Rats break into Indian ATM and eat cash worth £13,000

Rats have eaten their way throughout more than 1m rupees of banknotes after entering a cash machine in north-east India.

Staff at the State Bank of India called technicians after the cash machine stopped working, according to Times of India.

District police superintendent Mugdhajyoti Dev Mahanta said bank officials checked the ATM last week only to find a “dead rat and shredded banknotes when it was opened”, The Guardian reports.

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“The bank officials came to check the ATM machine last week and found a dead rat and shredded banknotes when it was opened,” the district police superintendent, Mugdhajyoti Dev Mahanta, said.

“We’ve checked and there is no other criminal or conspiracy angle to the incident. It looks like the rats entered the machine through a small opening for some wires.”

The rats munched through an estimated 1.2m rupees (£13,300), local media reported. Images showed an upended ATM filled with shredded 500 and 2,000 rupee notes.

Police official Prakash Sonowal said that the machine had been out of action for about 12 days.

The bank “may have not found the incident funny but Twitter users definitely did”, says Metro. One amused Twitter user wrote: “Surgical strike by mice on ATM machine”. Another added: “Looks like the mice are having a demonetisation of their own”.