The Hindu : Prisons filled with undertrials: NHRC

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, May 03, 2003

National

National

Prisons filled with undertrials: NHRC

By Anjali Mody

NEW DELHI May 2. India's prisons are filled with undertrials, according to the National Human Rights Commission. Statistics compiled by its custodial justice cell reveal that 2,25,817 of 3,04,893 or 74.06 per cent of the total prison population, are those awaiting trial.

The States and Union Territories that lead the list are Dadra and Nagar Haveli, whose entire prison population is comprised of undertrials, followed by Meghalaya with 94.66 per cent undertrials, Manipur with 92.19 per cent, Jammu and Kashmir with 91.67 per cent, Nagaland 89.87 per cent, Uttar Pradesh 87.37 per cent, Bihar 86.27 per cent, Jharkhand 83.24 per cent, Mizoram 79.14 per cent, Karnataka 79.34 per cent and Delhi 78.52 per cent undertrials.

Andaman and Nicobar and Tamil Nadu recorded the lowest number of undertrials as a percentage of total prison populations with 24.05 per cent and 36.16 per cent respectively.

The total jail capacity in India is for 2,32,412 prisoners, which makes the total prison population 31 per cent higher than capacity. Delhi tops the list for States with overcrowded prisons with 217 per cent more prisoners than it has room for. The other States that have prisons filled way beyond capacity are Jharkhand with a 165 per cent overflow, Chhattisgarh 110 per cent, Gujarat and Haryana 100 per cent each, Bihar 74 per cent, Sikkim 72 per cent, Uttar Pradesh 70 per cent, Madhya Pradesh 66 per cent, Orissa 54 per cent Goa 39 per cent and Tripura 35 per cent.

The NHRC also found that 10,414 women were in jail in India, accounting for 3.42 per cent of the jail population . Mizoram leads with 10 per cent of prisoners in the State being women. This is followed by Tamil Nadu with 6.59 per cent of all prisoners being women and Dadar and Nagar Haveli with 6.45 per cent.

The Commission said children younger than 5-6 years are allowed to live with their mothers in jail, and 1,369 women prisoners had their children living with them. But it does not say how many children in total are part of the prison population.

The only let-up in the grim lists of figures is the fact that in an international comparison of the number of prisoners per 100,000 of population India does well. It has 29.69 prisoners per lakh of population against 700 per lakh in the U.S. 650 in Russia, 400 in South Africa, 300 in Thailand, 132 in U.K. and 102 in Canada.

What the Commission does not say is that none of these countries has undertrials as the majority of their prison populations.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

National