Current Affairs:(Polity, Governance and Constitution)

65% OF PRISONERS IN INDIA ARE UNDERTRIALS:

No less than 65 per cent of prisoners in India are undertrials, making the country one of the world’s 10 “worst” in terms of the proportion of undertrials languishing in its jails. India’s prisons have 2.5 lakh undertrials, according to the National CRIME

RECORD Bureau (NCRB).

Factors contributing high undertrails

Indefinitely detained because the prison system fails to comply with laws that mandate their release after a specified period.
The prison system often violates the Code of Criminal Procedure (Section 436A), which states that undertrials must be released if they have served half the maximum period of imprisonment that their offence warrants [unless their crimes attract a death sentence].
Several lapses contribute to the extended detention of undertrials, for instance prisoner unaware of their undertrails right’s which is more frequently violated by authority.
Undertrials were also trapped by a lack of legal aid. For instance, out of 11 lawyers nominated to provide legal aid in Bangalore Central Prison in January 2012, five had not visited the jail once in these two-and-a-half-years, Amnesty International found.
Delays in producing undertrials in court owing to the lack of police escorts and ineffective videoconferencing facilities.
The Undertrial Review Committee in districts is “non-functional,” despite a November 2013 notification from the Ministry of Home Affairs.

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