Human sacrifice, once practised by all ancient civilizations, no longer exists today.

Judge as of 2025-09-24. The core test is 'Now it's gone': whether human sacrifice survives anywhere as a practice. The secondary detail is 'once practised by all ancient civilizations'. TRUE: no society, state or community openly practises or sanctions human sacrifice as an accepted institution, and the only remaining cases are isolated criminal acts that are prosecuted. In this case the 'all ancient civilizations' wording may be a modest overstatement, provided the practice was widespread across major ancient civilizations. MOSTLY TRUE: institutional sacrifice is gone, but documented clusters of ritual killings persist in some regions (e.g. child ritual murders reported in parts of East Africa or South Asia), or the 'all civilizations' generalisation is clearly overstated. MIXED: such ritual killings are recurrent and tolerated locally on a scale that makes 'gone' substantially misleading. MOSTLY FALSE: credible evidence shows communities in 2025 that practise human sacrifice as an accepted, ongoing custom. FALSE: human sacrifice is shown to be practised in 2025 as an openly sanctioned institution in some society.

Set before the research began.

1. E1 Sanwo-Olu, Fagbemi, others rally Africa against ritual killings, human trafficking Vanguard (Nigeria) · 23 October 2025

   “She cited NAPTIP data showing over 150 ritual killings in Nigeria within six months, urging stronger community vigilance and judicial reform.”

2. E2 Local musician arrested over murder of 4-year-old in ritual sacrifice in kitagwenda Eagle Online (Uganda) · 20 March 2025

   “Police have not ruled out the possibility of ritual sacrifice as a motive, citing the nature of the killing and the evidence found at the scene.”

3. E3 Ritual Killing and child sacrifice in Gombe Modern Ghana (republished statement from Advocacy for Alleged Witches, by Leo Igwe) · 8 May 2025

   “He stated that suspects would be charged in court soon.”

4. E4 Bihar villagers kill, burn 5 of family over suspected witchcraft India Today · 7 July 2025

   “Purnia Superintendent of Police Sweety Sehrawat told India Today TV that the incident occurred in a tribal village, confirming that the murders were related to jhaar-phoonk and tantra-mantra.”

None of the evidence shows any society or state openly practising or sanctioning human sacrifice as an accepted institution in 2025. Still, ritual killings were documented in clusters around that time. A speaker cited NAPTIP data showing over 150 ritual killings in Nigeria within six months (E1), and there were reports of suspected child ritual sacrifices in Uganda (E2) and Gombe, Nigeria (E3). In India, five family members were killed over suspected witchcraft (E4), which is related but is not clearly sacrifice. These cases were investigated or prosecuted as crimes (E2, E3, E4), which matches the criteria's 'mostly true' case: institutional sacrifice is gone, but clusters of ritual killings persist in some regions.