Prisons in India are overwhelmed by thousands of people who have been languishing for years awaiting trial, most of them young, barely literate, many of whom are so poor that they cannot afford to pay bail. In one case, a court of first instance in Delhi found in 2010 that Muhammad Maqbool Shah was innocent, and by that time had spent 14 years in prison. When he was arrested he was a teenager and was released from prison at the age of 29. When he returned to his home in Kashmir, he found that his father and sister had died. "If justice had been achieved in time, my career would not have been destroyed, and my family would not have been dispersed," NDT television quoted him as saying.
In 2017, police in Begnur, Uttar Pradesh, Pala Singh were imprisoned for 10 years for a murder he was never involved in, and his brother did it, but he remained free. Singh was arrested by police officers, although his mother admitted to the authorities that her other son was the culprit, and when he was released, he told reporters that he had only one desire to punish the arrested official.
What these two former defendants have in common is that they were arrested by the police for crimes they had never committed, and remained in prison for years before they were found innocent. The question is: are these two people an exception? This is not the case. Indian prison statistics reveal that 68% of the prisoners on trial receive no conviction from any court for any crime, and many wait for years before appearing in court.
The most recent reports by the National Office of Crime Records show that prisons in India are overwhelmed by illiterate or semi-illiterate young men and women, who belong to weak social and economic sectors of society, and more than 65% of the prisoners on trial belong to highly desirable categories that do not incur bail fees.
The direct consequence of this situation is that the length of time a prisoner is awaiting trial is determined not by the type of crime he is accused of, but by his or her ability to pay bail or legal fees. Worse, the fact that the accused is poor and hardly literate means that he is not familiar with the legal mechanism and, consequently, his inability to exercise his legal right to a speedy trial after which he is free from unjustified detention. The end result is that the defendants (mostly young men) have been in prison for years, awaiting the day the court hears their case.
For example, the number of criminal cases pending for more than 10 years in various lower courts in India, on 14 November this year, one million 846 thousand and 741 criminal cases, in addition to 245 thousand and 657 criminal cases pending in the higher courts on the same date and the same period. The question is: who is responsible for this default? There is no precise answer to the problem that lies in the structure and functioning of the entire justice system, from police to courts and prisons. The justice system lacks an accountability mechanism for leaving the accused in a deplorable state.
Countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany have enacted laws granting compensation to anyone who has suffered from justice. In May this year, a US court announced compensation of $ 1.5 million to a prisoner after it emerged that the prisoner had spent 46 years in prison for a murder he did not commit.
While the courts in India acknowledge flaws in the system, for an innocent person to be released years after being imprisoned, justice in his eyes may be an illusion, and in society, a person is considered a criminal after serving years, even if He was innocent.
Prisons in India are overwhelmed by young men and women from vulnerable social and economic sectors, and more than 65% of the prisoners on trial are from extremely vulnerable groups that do not bear bail fees.
The length of time a prisoner is awaiting trial is not determined by the type of crime he is accused of, but by his or her ability to pay bail or legal fees.