In a scathing comment on the criminal justice system in the country, two reports released here on Tuesday pointed out that nearly 70 per cent of the prison population (majority of them poor Muslims, Dalits and tribals), are not found guilty.

To top it, prisons in most states are overcrowded, with only one medical staff for every 225 prisoners, one correctional staff for 702 prisoners, and one guard for 10 prisoners.

Reports released As per the National Crime Records Bureau, India’s 1,401 jails have 4,19,623 inmates. “Average overcrowding stands at 114.4 per cent. The 10-year trend from 2006 to 2015 shows an increase of 15 per cent in undertrial population,” said the reports, ‘Circle of Injustice: The State of Indian Prisons’ and ‘Looking into the Haze: A Study on Prison Monitoring in India’, by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), which accessed most of the information through Right to Information.

Calling for strict compliance and monitoring of the Under Trial Review Committees (UTRC) for safeguarding the rights of those behind bars as directed by the Supreme Court, the reports also underlined how a lack of review was responsible for the pathetic conditions in India jails.

Compliance of court guidelines is “patchy and partial and the impact is uncertain. Most importantly, it is not clear if the purpose — no one must be detained for more than the period required by law — is being achieved,” said the reports, which found that only 149 districts out of 357 that responded, held meetings once every three months. “This means that 60 per cent of the districts did not comply with the mandate of holding quarterly meetings.”

Grave consequences Pointing out the grave consequences of unreformed prisons, Wajahat Habibullah, Executive Committee member, CHRI, said many Kashmiri minors who had been arrested during an earlier outbreak of violence in Jammu and Kashmir a decade ago had emerged as leaders of the current violence

“This was a probable outcome of minors being held with ‘hardened criminals’ instead of juvenile detention homes as should have happened under law,” he cautioned.

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