New Delhi: The number of unnatural deaths in prisons in India has increased by 10.74 per cent from 149 in 2018 to 165 in 2019, said a latest National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report.
Among the 165 un-natural deaths of inmates, 116 inmates have committed suicide, 20 inmates died in accidents, 10 inmates were murdered by inmates and 1 inmate died due to assault by outside elements during 2019. For a total of 66 inmate deaths, the cause of death is yet to be known.
However, the number of deaths in prisons has decreased marginally from 1,845 in 2018 to 1,775 in 2019, having decreased by 3.79 per cent, the NCRB data said.
Jailbreak, escape and firing in prison have also been reported last year. The NCRB data said that a total of 468 prisoners escaped during 2019 where 139 escapees (29.70 per cent) had escaped from police custody and 329 escaped from judicial custody.
“A total of 231 escapees were re-arrested during 2019. There were 20 incidences of jailbreak occurring during 2019. As many as 137 instances of clashes, group clashes also occurred during 2019,” the NCRB data on Prison Statistics in India-2019 said.
Ironically, jails across India have been facing a shortage of manpower. The NCRB data said that against a sanctioned strength of 87,599 jail-staff, the actual strength was 60,787 as of December last year.
Significantly, the number of prisoners of foreign nationality has increased from 5,168 in 2018 to 5,608 in 2019, having increased by 8.51 per cent during this period.
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Among these foreign national prisoners, 38.7 per cent (2,171 inmates) were convicts, 53.1 per cent (2,979 inmates) were undertrials and 0.7 per cent (40 inmates) were detenues. The NCRD report said that among the foreign convicts, the highest number of foreign convicts were from Bangladesh (67.7 per cent, 1,470 convicts) followed by Nepal (10.5 per cent, 228 convicts) and Myanmar (7.1 per cent,155 convicts) at the end of 2019.
The actual capacity of prisons in India has also increased from 3,96,223 in 2018 to 4,03,739 in 2019. And at the same time, the number of prisoners lodged in various jails has also increased from 4,66,084 in 2018 to 4,78,600 in 2019, having increased by 2.69 per cent during the period.
Meanwhile, the Home Ministry in a communication to the state and UTs have asked to formulate standard operating procedures (SOPs) for combating crimes against weaker sections of the society, including women, children and scheduled castes & scheduled tribes.
In a communication to the states, the ministry said that crime cases pertaining to such people should be strictly investigated and a charge sheet against accused in such cases should be filed at the earliest.
