BHUBANESWAR: The back-to-back custodial torture incidents in the last one month has raised serious questions on the functioning of the Odisha Police and degrading law enforcement machinery in the state.
In the latest such incident, a 32-year-old daily wage labourer died after allegedly being tortured in police custody in Ganjam district on Sunday night. He had been picked up by the cops for allegedly attacking a police team that had gone to a stone quarry for a raid recently.
This was the third such incident in the last one month. On May 21, another 32-year-old man was allegedly subjected to third-degree torture at Barang police station after being detained over recovery of a half-buried body of a woman from the Kathajodi riverbed, which was suspected to be his missing wife. He is currently under treatment in a hospital.
Similarly on May 25, a mother-son duo was allegedly subjected to custodial torture at the Talchua Marine police station in Kendrapara district after they had been called for questioning over a family dispute.
The string of incidents have raised concern among human rights activists who have termed these as an assault to human dignity and a violation of the constitutional right to life.
Rights activist Pradip Pradhan attributed such cases to systemic failures, rendering the police administration in complete chaos. “These days, police officers presume that they are immune to accountability. For an instance, Talchua Marine IIC Sandhyarani Jena, who was suspended for subjecting a mother-son duo to custodial torture, had faced similar action for assaulting a youth at Patna police station in Keonjhar district during Covid lockdown in 2020,” he said. Pradhan pointed out that police officers currently seem to believe that they can get away even after using excessive force.
“The senior officers are not closely monitoring the activities at the police station level for which the field officers are acting as per their whims and fancies,” he rued.
Another rights activist Biswapriya Kanungo said the criticism over deteriorating law and order situation has been pushing the police officers to resort to third degree punishment to quickly obtain confessions from the suspects.
“The incidents of custodial torture are taking place at regular intervals in the state. Police are also not sincerely following the laws which prevent them from subjecting a suspect to custodial torture,” he added.
In fact, Odisha has recorded an alarming rise in custodial deaths, from two in 2021-22 to nine in 2025-2026 (up to March 15), an increase of seven cases or 350 per cent. The state had registered three custodial deaths in 2022-2023 and two each in 2023-2024 and 2024-2025, the data presented in the Lok Sabha stated.
Around 48 deaths were reported in police custody between 2014 and 2023. Eight custodial cases were registered in 2015, seven each in 2019 and 2020, five each in 2021 and 2022, four each in 2016 and 2023, three each in 2017 and 2018 and two in 2014.
What is even more concerning is the fact that investigation in more than half of these cases is either pending inquiry at the police station or Human Rights Protection Cell (HRPC) level.
