Over 9,600 children ‘wrongly’ locked up in adult jails in India in 6 years: RTI study

As many as 9,681 children have been ‘wrongly’ incarcerated in adult prisons in India over a period of six years, a study by legal justice non-profit iProbono, has found.

The study titled “Incarceration of Children In Prisons in India” relies on data obtained through 124 Right to Information (RTI) applications filed between April 2022 and March 2023 across 28 states and two union territories.

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“The data we received indicates that at least 9,681 children were wrongly incarcerated in adult prisons across the country between 1 January 2016 and 31 December 2021,” reads the report launched by two children in conflict with the law (CCLs) who lost crucial years of their lives lodged in prisons at New Delhi's India Islamic Cultural Center on May 11.

"For six years, i thought the jail would be the end of my life. I lost my childhood," said one of the children on the occasion.

Justice S Ravindra Bhat, former Supreme Court judge and former chairperson of the Supreme Court Juvenile Justice Committee, delivered the keynote address on the occasion. Gitanjali Prasad, lead author of the report and advisor to iProbono, presented the context to and main findings of the study.

A press statement issued by iProbono said that the study examines the effective implementation of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 (JJ Act) which legally mandates that a child alleged to have committed an offence, or found guilty of an offence, is to be placed in an appropriate juvenile home - such as an observation home, special home, or a place of safety - and not an adult prison.

District prison Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, for example,  had the highest number of children (294) transferred in six years, despite there being no Juvenile Justice Board visits. Among the five UP central jails, only Central Prison Naini transferred children – 203 during the period of study. 

Similarly, in district prison Araria and Central Prison Bhagalpur of Bihar, the number of children identified by JJBs was greater than the number of children transferred from prisons to juvenile homes.

Two states – Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal (with the 3rd and 6th highest prison populations, respectively, based on 2022 data), didn't respond to RTI queries, according to the report. 

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The report comes amid overcrowding of Indian prisons. The prison occupancy rate has shot up in the last five years, shows the 2023 Prison Statistics India Report.  The intent behind the study is to both protect a children in conflict with the law (CCLs) from any mental or physical trauma that they may be subjected to in prison, the report said. 

“Yet despite the courts and the JJ Act laying down procedural safeguards by allocating responsibilities to different institutional stakeholders, this is a rampant and systemic issue that goes back decades,” it said.