Human Sacrifice in Odisha: Behind the Shocking Balangir Narabali and State Trends| Special Report

Bhubaneswar: A suspected case of human sacrifice, or narabali, has come to light from Balangir district on August 21, once again exposing the dangerous persistence of superstition and occult beliefs in parts of rural Odisha.

Police have arrested 40-year-old Shatrughna Sahu after he allegedly beheaded a mentally challenged youth, Santosh Kharsel, in Bagda village under Deogaon police limits. According to the allegations, Sahu believed that sacrificing a human being would help bring back his estranged wife, who had left him around a decade ago over his obsessive tantric practices.

The accused allegedly lured Kharsel to his house on the pretext of a feast, killed him while he was asleep and buried the severed head beneath the floor of his puja room along with ritual items. The torso was allegedly dumped in a nearby pond. Police have recovered the remains and the suspected murder weapon and arrested Sahu along with four others.

How has been the trend in Odisha?

Human sacrifice is not a frequent crime in Odisha in the conventional statistical sense. But that is precisely why every suspected case carries enormous significance.

Unlike ordinary murder, narabali is an exceptionally rare and ritual-driven crime. Even one suspected incident in a year is enough to trigger serious concern because it indicates that the belief in killing a human being to appease a deity, obtain hidden wealth or fulfil a personal desire has survived.

The available tracking of reported and judicially investigated cases suggests that Odisha has seen one or two suspected cases in several recent years.

Year	No. of suspected cases	Key district(s)	Major incident / status
2026 (up to August)	2	Balangir, Nabarangpur	Balangir human sacrifice incident involving the killing of Santosh Kharsel; suspected child sacrifice attempt foiled in Nabarangpur
2025	1	—	One suspected case recorded
2024	2	—	Two suspected cases recorded
2023	1	—	One suspected case recorded
2022	1	—	One suspected case recorded
2021	0	—	No specific human sacrifice case recorded

Total: 7 suspected human sacrifice cases tracked over six years (2021–August 2026).

The 2026 cases include the Balangir incident and a suspected child sacrifice attempt foiled in Nabarangpur.
The problem, however, is that human sacrifice does not exist as a separately and consistently tabulated crime category in the same way as murder.

Such cases may ultimately enter police and court records as murder, while the ritual or occult motive becomes relevant during investigation and trial. The result is that the true number of narabali cases is difficult to isolate from official crime data.

There is also a much larger ecosystem of witchcraft- and superstition-related violence in Odisha, which should not be confused with pure human sacrifice. Witch-hunting usually involves people being branded as witches and attacked or killed, often over illness, crop failure, family disputes or social prejudice. Narabali, by contrast, involves the deliberate killing or intended killing of a person as an offering or as part of a ritual believed to bring supernatural benefit.

The distinction is important. A state can have very few pure human sacrifice cases and still have a larger problem of occult-linked violence. In Odisha, the recurring appearance of one or two suspected narabali cases over the years, especially involving vulnerable children or mentally challenged persons, suggests that the crime may be rare, but not extinct.

Where does Odisha stand in India?

Odisha is not necessarily India's biggest hotspot for pure human sacrifice in absolute numbers, but it belongs to the wider eastern-central belt where superstition, witch-hunting and occult violence have remained a serious social problem.

State	Reported pattern of suspected pure human sacrifice	Comparison with Odisha	Broader occult / witchcraft violence pattern
Odisha	1–2 cases annually	Baseline	Relatively high concern due to the wider prevalence of superstition and witchcraft-related violence
Jharkhand	1–2 cases annually	Broadly similar to Odisha	Significant witchcraft and occult-linked violence, particularly in tribal and rural belts
Madhya Pradesh	1–2 cases annually	Broadly similar to Odisha	Occult-related killings and superstition-linked crimes continue to surface
Chhattisgarh	Fewer than Odisha; generally under 1 case annually	Lower than Odisha	Pure narabali cases are fewer, though witchcraft-linked violence remains a concern
Kerala	Rare, isolated cases	Lower frequency than Odisha	Overall witchcraft-linked killing pattern is far lower, but isolated cases have triggered national shock

Takeaway: Odisha broadly falls in the 1–2 suspected pure human sacrifice cases-a-year range, alongside Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh.

Chhattisgarh reports fewer such cases, while Kerala sees rare but exceptionally high-profile incidents.

What makes Odisha significant is the background environment of superstition-related violence. Human sacrifice remains a tiny subset of a much broader category that includes black magic, occult practices and witch-hunting. That means Odisha's challenge is not the volume of narabali alone, but the persistence of the social and superstitious ecosystem in which such extreme crimes can occur.

For Odisha, therefore, even one suspected narabali in a year cannot be dismissed as an isolated murder statistic. A single ritual killing is a warning signal of an extreme form of superstition – one in which a human life is consciously reduced to an offering for perceived supernatural gain.

How does Indian jurisprudence define human sacrifice or narabali?

Indian criminal law does not have a standalone offence titled "human sacrifice" or "narabali" in the core penal code. Legally, when a person is intentionally killed as part of a ritual, the crime is fundamentally prosecuted under the law relating to murder. The alleged ritual motive does not make the killing any less a homicide; instead, it becomes an important factor in establishing the nature of the crime, motive and circumstances.

In jurisprudential terms, a killing takes the character of human sacrifice when the prosecution can establish that the victim was killed as an offering to appease a deity or supernatural force, obtain supernatural power or hidden wealth, cure an ailment, or secure some other believed supernatural benefit. The ritual motive, premeditation and evidence surrounding the act – such as a puja site, ritual objects, offerings or other occult circumstances – can become critical pieces of evidence.

The law may also distinguish between a human sacrifice and a ritual murder in terms of the purpose and treatment of the body. In the former, the killing itself may constitute the offering; in the latter, body parts or other post-mortem acts may form part of the ritual.

At the sentencing stage, the ritual and superstitious motive can aggravate the gravity of the crime. Courts assess such murders under the established "rarest of rare" sentencing doctrine, considering factors such as premeditation, exceptional depravity, vulnerability of the victim and the circumstances of the killing. But the mere label of human sacrifice does not automatically determine the sentence; the final punishment depends on the evidence and the judicial assessment of the individual case.

Odisha's latest Balangir case, if the alleged ritual motive is established through investigation and evidence, will therefore stand as more than an ordinary murder case. It will revive an uncomfortable question for the state: How does a practice considered almost extinct in modern society still resurface with enough force that even one suspected case a year remains a possibility?

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