Death behind bars in Chhattisgarh Premium

The custodial death of tribal leader Jeevan Thakur in Chhattisgarh raises urgent concerns about prisoner safety and systemic neglect.

Sameer Thakur, 21, still hasn’t come to terms with the events leading up to the death of his father Jeevan Thakur on December 4, 2025. Jeevan, 49, a former janpad chairperson of Charama panchayat, died in a government hospital in Raipur, just two days after he was shifted to the Central Jail in the State Capital from a jail in Kanker, nearly 150 kilometres away. Jeevan had been lodged as an undertrial, accused of forging documents for a forest lease. In three weeks, he would have turned 50.

His death — one of the 66 custodial deaths in Chhattisgarh’s prisons between January 2025 and January 2026 — had since prompted street protests across the Bastar area, where Kanker is located. The protesters said that the tribal leader, who was an office bearer of the Sarva Adivasi Samaj, an umbrella organisation for tribal communities in the State, had been tortured.

The matter was hotly debated in Chhattisgarh’s Legislative Assembly during the Budget session, with the government giving out the figures for the deaths.

Sameer has faced many blows over the past 5 months. He alleges that the Kanker jail authorities denied his heavily diabetic father proper medical care since his arrest on October 12 last year. His older brother Neeraj Thakur as well as their maternal uncle Sopsingh Thakur, had been arrested in the same case. Neeraj, too, died in January after his health deteriorated while out on bail. 

 “On December 1, my uncle (Sopsingh) told us that my father’s health had deteriorated to the extent that he was unable even to walk to the meeting barrack. We requested the jail authorities to address the case on an urgent basis, but were told that he was doing alright,” says Sameer.  

He adds that on December 3, they learnt that Jeevan had been moved to Raipur for better treatment. The next day Sameer went to the Kanker jail to ask about his father’s whereabouts. “There I was told by the jail staff that my father had been moved to a government hospital in Raipur. I confronted them about why we were not told about it officially earlier,” he says, adding that his brother, who was in the same jail, was also not informed about the shift. “We established contact with Raipur’s Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar Memorial Hospital with the help of the Kanker MLA. Only then did we learn that he had died that morning. For hours after his death, there was not even an attempt to communicate,” he says.