A FARMER was shocked when combing a crop of oilseed rape to dig up an empty cash machine, believed to have been stolen in a ram raid on a petrol station in Odiham.

The farmer, who does not wish to be named, told Farmers Weekly that he discovered the damaged ATM hidden under a coat in a hedge on a farm near Basingstoke.

He alerted the police, who probed the scene.

Police later confirmed that the cash machine was the one that had been ripped out of the wall by thieves who ram-raided a Mace store at a Texaco petrol station in Dunley’s Hill, Odiham, on July 14.

The farmer told how he was using a combine harvester on the rape field when he noticed a large piece of steel in the hedgerow, partially covered by a coat.

It seems that, in the early hours of the morning, the thieves had stolen a large digger from a nearby construction site, driven it through a field onto a road and straight through a petrol station forecourt.

The cash machine contained £56,000 and the ram raiders used an angle grinder to break through its steel casing.

The farmer told Farmers Weekly: “There was nothing left in it when I found it except an old pair of gloves.”

The farmer said he had found a discarded disc from an angle grinder, believed to have been used in the theft, on another part of the farm a couple of days before he discovered the cash machine.

It is believed the thieves took the cash machine to an isolated part of the farm to cut open the safe.

The farmer said police had told him the ram raid in Odiham was being linked to a number of similar cash machine thefts across the county, including ram raids, or attempted thefts, from properties in Alton, Bordon, Liphook, Lindford and Bishop’s Waltham, as well as across the Surrey border in Farnham, Haslemere, Guildford and Woking.

“The thieves appear to be targeting a specific type of cash machine. It’s clear they know how to open it,” added the farmer.

Police have urged farmers and landowners to take steps to prevent the theft of farm machinery that could be used in cash machine ram raids.

Anyone with information on the ram raid in Odiham, or other cash machine thefts, should call police on 101.