Police personnel from the Bareilly Cantonment station have claimed that rats drank around 1,000 litres of seized liquor that was kept in the storehouse, the Hindustan Times reported on Saturday.

According to The Times of India, some cans in which the liquor was stored were missing, while several cans were found empty with holes in them. The liquor was seized from illegal manufacturing units.

Superintendent of Police Abhinandan Singh said an inquiry would be conducted to ascertain how the liquor went missing. “Cantonment police station head muharrir [clerk], Naresh Pal, who was posted here recently, opened the door of the malkhana [storeroom] and found some liquor cans empty,” Singh said. “He also saw rats near the seized liquor cans.”

Singh said seized liquor is usually destroyed after officials store a sample for legal purposes. “The stock kept in the malkhana dated back to a decade even though it should have been destroyed,” Singh told The Times of India. “I had written to senior officers informing them that the practice of destroying illegal liquor was not being followed here but received no response.”

The police in Bihar have in the past blamed rats for more than 9 lakh litres of alcohol going missing. In September 2017, two Bihar ministers had even blamed the rodents for flooding in the state. Earlier this year, mice were blamed for destroying currency notes worth more than Rs 12 lakh deposited in a State Bank of India ATM in Assam’s Tinsukia district.