Undertrials up from 69 to 76%, prisoners’ access to courts, hospitals fell 65%, 24%

By Jag Jivan*
Access of prisoners to courts fell by 65%, and to hospitals by 24%, according to the Prison Statistics India (PSI) 2020, the latest official statistics on the state of India’s prisons and their inmates, published in December 2021, an analysis of the PSI data by The India Justice Report (IJR), released recently, has said.
Brought out by a collective of organisations -- Centre for Social Justice, Common Cause, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, DAKSH, TISS–Prayas, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy and How India Lives, and supported by Tata Trusts, Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies and the Tree of Life Foundation, IJR, which, since 2019, has been reporting on justice delivery in India, said, prisoners’ visits to courts came down nearly a third, from about 44.5 lakhs in 2019 to 15.5 lakhs in 2020.
Impacted too was inmates’ access to health services, with the number of visits, made by prisoners for medical attendance, declining from 4.77 lakh in 2019 to 3.63 lakh visits in 2020, said the report, adding, visits by medical personnel to prisons also reduced from 24,524 in 2019 to 20,871 in 2020, while visits by judicial officers nearly halved to 9,257 in 2020 from 16,178 in 2019.
Maja Daruwala, Chief Editor, IJR, said, “The status of essential capacities decides the efficacy of the pillars of the justice system to deliver to the standards they have set for themselves.” She added, “The PSI 2020 presents a grim picture of the state of prisons through the pandemic. Despite the many efforts to decongest these institutions, and minimise the risks of contagion inherent in these overcrowded places, their overall condition has not improved.”

Overcrowding

About 9 lakh more arrests were made in 2020, and, taken at December 2020 in terms of absolute numbers, the prison population grew 1.5% from 481,387 to 488,511 inmates, the report said, adding, the annual increase is particularly worrying; given that 2020 was a Covid year when a slew of decongestion efforts were being implemented across the nation. However, the total number of people entering and leaving prisons in the course of the year fell from 19.02 lakhs in 2019 to 16.31 lakh in 2020.

The report said, as of December 2020, nationally, overcrowding stood at 18%, a marginal reduction of 2 percentage points from the previous year. This figure is the national average across 1,306 prisons. In nine (Jharkhand, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Meghalaya, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim, Uttar Pradesh) states overcrowding rates are more than the national average.
Much of this overcrowding is accounted for by the presence of ‘undertrials’, it said. Their share has increased from 69% in December 2019 to 76% in December 2020; showing that for every 1 convicted prisoner, there are 3 people in custody awaiting ‘investigation, inquiry or trial’.
According to the report, this follows a long-term trend. Five years ago, in 2016, undertrials accounted for 68% of the prison population. As with all preceding years, a majority of prisoners come from amongst the poor and illiterate. Besides chronic overcrowding, other long term comorbidities in the prison system have persisted and indeed worsened.

1 in 3 staff positions vacant

The report noted, across the country and despite this period traversing a pandemic, the shortage of medical officers and staff continues; and, in some states, their numbers have, in fact, gone down. Nationally, vacancies among medical staff and officers stand at about 33%, which means 1 in every 3 posts has not been filled.
There were 797 medical officers in the country’s prisons to serve nearly 489,000 inmates, it said. On average, this means each medical officer was looking after 613 inmates. However, the Model Prison Manual 2016 requires there to be 1 medical officer for every 300 inmates.
The sanctioned strength in 17 states (Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Punjab, Haryana, Karnataka, Kerala, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Nagaland) does not meet this criterion. Only 9 states (Bihar, Uttarakhand, Tripura, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Manipur, Haryana) have managed to reduce their medical officer vacancies.
Then, it said, from January to December 2020, total deaths went from 1764 in the previous year to 1887. The deaths remain categorised as ‘natural’ ‘unnatural’ and ‘cause not known’, and deaths related to Covid have not been disaggregated.

Video-conferencing facilities

The average number of prisons equipped with a video conferencing facility rose from 60% in 2019 to 69% in 2020. Thirteen states/UTs (Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Delhi, Assam, Puducherry, Ladakh, Chandigarh, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Haryana, DnH & Daman Diu, Uttarakhand, Goa) had 100% coverage across their prisons.
In contrast, 6 states/UTs (Tamil Nadu, A&N Islands, Nagaland, West Bengal, Manipur, Rajasthan) had less than half of their prisons equipped with this facility. Tamil Nadu, with 142 prisons, had only 10% or 14 jails with a V-C facility. None of Lakshadweep’s 4 prisons had this facility available.

---

*Freelance writer

Comments

Beyond India-China borders: Economic links expand, political gaps persist

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak* Despite growing trade between India and China, a persistent trust deficit continues to shape their bilateral relationship. Expanding economic engagement has not fully resolved political differences, many of which stem from historical legacies as well as contemporary geopolitical concerns. Border disputes—often traced to colonial-era arrangements—remain a significant obstacle to deeper cooperation, while differing strategic alignments in global affairs add further complexity.

Gujarat cadre to HDFC: When bureaucratic style hits corporate walls

By Rajiv Shah I was a little amused by the abrupt March 17, 2026 resignation of Atanu Chakraborty —a Gujarat cadre IAS officer of the 1985 batch who retired from the government in 2020—as chairman of HDFC Bank . Much of what may have led to his decision to quit this ostensibly high post—actually a non-executive, part-time role—is by now well known. I followed most of it online with considerable interest, partly because I had interacted with him umpteen times during my stint as The Times of India correspondent in Gandhinagar from 1997 to 2012.

Operation Epic Fury: Making America great at the world’s expense?

By N.S. Venkataraman* The decades-long enmity between Iran and Israel is well-documented, but historically, their direct confrontations have been brief, constrained by the logistical and economic limitations of sustained warfare. The current conflict in the Middle East, however, marks a radical and dangerous departure from this pattern.

India has been getting its economic growth wrong for two decades, say top economists

By Jag Jivan* India's official GDP figures have misrepresented the trajectory of the world's fifth-largest economy for the better part of two decades, according to a major new working paper published by the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE). It finds that India overstated annual growth by up to two percentage points after 2011 — and understated it during the boom years of the 2000s.

Buddhist shrines were 'massively destroyed' by Brahmanical rulers: Historian DN Jha

Nalanda mahavihara By Rajiv Shah Prominent historian DN Jha, an expert in India's ancient and medieval past, in his new book , "Against the Grain: Notes on Identity, Intolerance and History", in a sharp critique of "Hindutva ideologues", who look at the ancient period of Indian history as "a golden age marked by social harmony, devoid of any religious violence", has said, "Demolition and desecration of rival religious establishments, and the appropriation of their idols, was not uncommon in India before the advent of Islam".

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

'Tax the top': Nationwide protests demand action as 1% control 40% of India’s wealth

By A Representative Civil rights groups across the country observed the martyrdom day of Bhagat Singh on March 23, as people from diverse backgrounds united to raise their voices against growing economic inequality. The mobilisations marked the launch of a nationwide campaign against inequality, running from March 23 to April 14 (Ambedkar Jayanti), under the banner of the “Tax The Top” campaign.

Fair prices, fresh produce: Vegetable market opens in Rajasthan tribal village

By Vikas Meshram* On 18 March 2026, the tribal village of Sajjangarh in southern Rajasthan witnessed the grand and dignified inauguration of a new vegetable market (mandi). Established through the tireless joint efforts of the Krushi Avam Adivasi Swaraj Sangathan (Bhilkuaan) and Vaagdhara, under the active leadership of the Gram Panchayat of Sajjangarh, the market is being hailed as a cornerstone for local self-governance, self-reliance, and a sustainable rural economy.

Ex-IAS Atanu Chakraborty and a tale of two different Gujarat vision documents

By Rajiv Shah The likely appointment of Atanu Chakraborty as HDFC Bank chairman interested me for several reasons, but above all because I have interacted with him closely during my more than 14 year stint in Gandhinagar for the “Times of India”. One of the few decent Gujarat cadre bureaucrats, Chakraborty, belonging to the 1985 IAS batch, at least till I covered Sachivalaya was surely above controversies. He loved to remain faceless, never desired publicity, was professional to the core, and never indulged in loose talk. When he neared retirement, which happened in April 2020, first there were rumours in Sachivalaya that he would be appointed SEBI chairman, and then there was talk he would be chairman (or was it CEO?) of Gujarat International Finance Tec (GIFT) City (a dream project of Narendra Modi as Gujarat chief minister, which as Prime Minister Modi wants to promote, come what may). But, for some strange reasons, and I don’t know why, none of this happened, despite the fact...

Search This Blog