First published March 2, 2021.
In February 2021, Indian media reported that termites had destroyed about 5 lakh rupees in cash, that is 500,000 rupees, belonging to a pig farmer and pork seller in Mylavaram, a town in Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh. The man, named in reports as Bijili Jamalayya, had kept his savings in an old trunk at home and planned to use them to build a house for his family.
At early-2021 exchange rates of roughly 73 rupees to the US dollar, 500,000 rupees came to about 6,900 dollars. Some English-language websites that shared the story at the time wrongly converted the sum to hundreds of thousands of dollars, because they treated "lakh" as a currency rather than a number. The loss was still devastating for a working family, but it was not a fortune on that scale.
What happened in Mylavaram
According to The News Minute and Business Today, Jamalayya used cash for his business dealings and had no bank account. He wrapped his savings in a bag made from old fertiliser sacks and stored it in a trunk. Police later said he had hidden the money partly to keep it out of reach of his son.
He discovered the damage when he opened the trunk to take out about 1 lakh rupees (100,000 rupees) that he needed for his business and to repay a debt. Instead of bundles of notes, the family found shredded paper. The trunk's contents were tipped out onto a bed and the ground as relatives tried to save what they could. Reports mention 500, 200, 100, 20 and 10 rupee notes among the ruined money.
Local people alerted the police in Mylavaram, who spoke with Jamalayya about the money. Some overseas websites added that neighbours noticed his children playing with the damaged notes, a detail not included in the Indian reports we checked. A police officer blamed the heavy rains of 2020, which had made termites a bigger problem than usual in the area.
Lakh explained: getting the numbers right
The Indian numbering system groups large numbers differently from the international one. A lakh is 100,000 and a crore is 10 million (100 lakh). So 5 lakh rupees is 500,000 rupees, usually written in India as 5,00,000.
Confusion over this unit is common in foreign coverage of Indian news. When a figure in lakh is mistaken for a currency or multiplied twice, the result can be off by a factor of a hundred or more. Checking the original rupee amount, then converting with the exchange rate of the day, avoids that mistake.
Why some families keep savings at home
Cash remains central to everyday life for many small traders, farmers and labourers in India, especially in rural areas. Payments for animals, feed and labour are often made in notes, and a box at home can feel more immediate and more private than a bank branch some distance away.
Access to banking has changed quickly, however. The government's Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, launched in August 2014 to give every household a basic account, had opened about 417 million accounts by January 2021, shortly before this story broke. The claim, repeated in some international reports of the story, that most Indians have no bank account was already out of date by then. Jamalayya's situation reflects a family that had stayed outside the system rather than the national norm.
Distrust, worries about paperwork and the habit of handling cash all play a part in such choices. The Mylavaram case shows the hidden risk: money at home can be lost to theft, fire, flood or, as here, insects, with no insurance or deposit protection to fall back on.
Why termites eat banknotes
Termites feed on cellulose, the tough material in plant cell walls. Most species rely on microbes in their gut to break it down. Wood is their best-known food, but paper and cotton are also largely cellulose, and banknote paper is commonly made from cotton fibre. A dark, damp trunk full of notes wrapped in sacking is close to ideal for a termite colony.
Around 3,000 termite species have been described worldwide, and most are harmless, recycling dead plant matter in soils and forests. A minority are serious pests. Scientists list about 26 economically significant pest species in the Indian subcontinent, which damage timber in buildings, furniture, stored goods and crops. Moisture after heavy monsoon rains can make infestations worse, matching what the local police said.
Can termite-damaged money be replaced?
In India, damaged or mutilated banknotes can be taken to bank branches and Reserve Bank of India offices, which assess them under the central bank's note refund rules. How much is paid depends on how much of each note remains and whether it can be identified. Notes reduced to powder usually cannot be exchanged.
In Jamalayya's case, The News Minute reported that officials from a Bank of Baroda branch in Vijayawada had offered to help compensate him, and that police planned to record the remaining balance and send the details to the Reserve Bank of India. How much was eventually recovered was not widely reported.
Practical lessons for protecting cash and documents
- Use a bank or post office account where possible, even a basic zero-balance one, so savings are protected from pests, fire and theft.
- If you must store cash at home, keep it in a sealed metal or hard plastic container, off the floor, away from damp walls and away from wood.
- Check stored valuables regularly, particularly after heavy rain, when termites become more active.
- Watch for warning signs such as mud tubes on walls, hollow-sounding wood and small piles of droppings or wings, and call a pest-control professional early.
- Keep important papers such as land records, IDs and certificates in waterproof sleeves and keep copies elsewhere.
Jamalayya's story spread around the world because it sounded almost unbelievable. Behind the headline is a familiar problem for many households: years of hard work kept in one place, with nothing to protect it if something goes wrong.
Sources: The News Minute: Termites eat Rs 5 lakh cash stored by man; Business Today: Termites devour Rs 5 lakh; Wikipedia: Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana; Wikipedia: Termite; I Heart Intelligence.
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