Bhubaneswar: In a saddening incident, a 55-year-old man and his 24-year-old son were killed in lightning strike in Odisha’s Dhenkanal district on Sunday.

The incident took place at Balipada village under Kamakhyanagar police limits in Dhenkanal. The deceased have been identified as Santosh Dehury and his son Satyanarayan Dehury of the village.

Lightning struck the father-son duo while they were transplanting paddy saplings on their farmland in the afternoon, reports said.

The villagers rescued the duo and rushed them to the Kamakhyanagar Sub-Divisional Hospital in a critical condition. However, Santosh and his son Satyanarayan were declared dead on arrival by the doctors, they added.

On being informed, the Kamakhyanagar police reached the hospital and seized the bodies before sending them for postmortem. The cops also launched a probe into the incident.

It is worth mentioning that altogether 1,625 people died in lightning strikes in Odisha in five years between 2019 and 2024. The figure is the highest for any Indian state, the state government had informed the Odisha Assembly.