Story in numbers: 3 in 4 prisoners in Indian jails await trial, shows data

India has 371,848 prisoners in pre-trial detention, colloquially referred to as undertrials.

As many as 76 per cent, or three in four, of all prisoners in Indian jails are awaiting trial. This compares poorly with the global average of 34 per cent.

On the metric of the percentage of undertrials, India ranks second, next only to Bangladesh, among the 54 Commonwealth countries, according to a June 2022 Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) report on pre-trial detentions.

Globally, India ranks sixth, after Liechtenstein (91.7 per cent), San Marino (88.9 per cent), Haiti (81.9 per cent), Gabon (80.2 per cent), and Bangladesh (80 per cent).

Besides the absolute numbers is the length of incarceration without trial: One in four undertrials is confined for one year or more, and one in eight is in jail for two- five years, according to government data from 2020. In 10 years to 2020, the percentage of undertrials who have been in jail for one year or more increased nearly seven percentage points to 29 per cent.

What the numbers add up to is this: India has more prisoners awaiting trial than ever before, and more prisoners are spending longer periods in jail than before.

Covid-related restrictions, including in the national lockdown, in 2020 meant that Indian courts went virtual. There was a 12 per cent increase in the number of undertrials in the period until December 2020, against an average increase of 4 per cent in the previous four years.