January 2, 2026 07:10 AM IST First published on: Jan 2, 2026 at 07:10 AM ISTThere is a faraway country where every silence is punctuated by the sound of man’s best friend chewing dutifully on man’s child’s homework notebook. Where everyone has an infinite number of dead grandmothers. Where every adult gets food poisoning on Monday morning. This country has its own currency, called the “doctor’s note”. The justice system there faces a serious challenge: Police stations are besieged by legions of rodents in cahoots with criminal gangs, seeking to eat the evidence.The rats appear to have tunnelled their way to a victory in Jharkhand, where they supposedly ate 200 kg of ganja that was part of the evidence in a drugs case. Acquitting the accused last month, a court referred to a station diary entry noting the gnawing of the ganja. “This casts a suspicion on the very seizure of the case and its handling by the police,” the court said. However, there are precedents. In Mathura in 2022, the rats reportedly destroyed more than 500 kg of confiscated cannabis according to the police. In Houston, Texas, the police realised in 2024 that “the rats were the only ones enjoying” the marijuana they had in storage. A report quoted the CEO of the Houston Forensic Science Centre as saying, “Think about it, they are drug-addicted rats. They’re tough to deal with.”AdvertisementIf drug-addicted rats are a menace, they have to be weeded out. But the facts must first be established. There have surely been canines who enjoyed a well-written essay, so there’s a case to be made here. Or perhaps it’s a tale from that other country.