INCARCERATED GENDER: A STUDY OF WOMEN PRISONERS IN BIHAR JAILS (2020-2024)

Pooja Kumari

Chief Coordinator and Research Associate, PPF

INCARCERATED GENDER:  A STUDY OF WOMEN PRISONERS IN BIHAR JAILS (2020-2024) 

By Pooja Kumari 

The study reveals that women under prison suffers from gross violation of human rights of various kinds. These violations, however, are not uniform (both in scales and kinds) across all Jails that we visited and examined in Bihar. Rather, the variations in cultural understanding of the process and everyday practices of governances, local power dynamics, political governance, institutional habitues and administrative behaviour produces different trajectories in each jail.

There are some common narratives/causations that that run across all the jails like ‘poor health of accused/prisoner’, ‘medical negligence’ and secondly, most of the victims belong to poor segment of society including SC, ST, and minorities. However, there is a variation in the narratives concerning condition of prisoners. While ‘Poor health of the arrestee/ prisoner’ emerged as the dominant factors for poor condition of the women in the official narratives, the civil society stakeholders identified ‘torture’, ‘bribery’, ‘corruption’ and ‘lack of medical care’ as the major factors for the same.

The practice of torture, particularly in relation to women, is declining compared to past decades. This was confirmed by many members of civil society including some of those working in the field of human rights. Notwithstanding the overall decline in the police practice of torture, the enactment of ‘anti torture law’ is a necessity. Such law is, indeed, a desirable goal and the adoption of such measures by the Government of India will help in boosting the democratic image of the state and will make the police and jail officials more accountable for its illegal coercive action.

The study report can be downloaded below: