Justice Vikram Nath: India’s Prisons Filled with 70% ‘Legally Innocent’ Awaiting Trial

(By Syed Ali Taher Abedi)

Delhi,8, November,2025 -: Highlighting one of the most persistent fissures in India’s criminal justice system, Supreme Court Judge Justice Vikram Nath on Friday said that nearly 70% of the country’s prison population consists of undertrials—people who have not yet been found guilty of any offence. He termed the figure a “stark reminder of systemic failure” and called for immediate reforms in the way legal aid and undertrial detention are administered across the country.

“There are undertrials who have spent time in prison exceeding the maximum sentence for the very offense they are accused of. There are undertrials charged with bailable offenses who remain in custody simply because they could not furnish bail. There are undertrials who would have been acquitted or given suspended sentences had their trials concluded promptly- yet they continue to languish.”

Justice Nath was speaking at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, during the release of the Fair Trial Programme Report for Pune and Nagpur, an initiative undertaken by the Square Circle Clinic.

“At the heart of this crisis lies the simple truth,” he said. “Most undertrials remain behind bars not because the law demands it, but because the system has failed them.”

“Even in cases where they do know, they often refrain from seeking it due to distrust stemming from past experiences. They rather go ahead with engaging some private advocate believing that if they pay someone, he’ll do better than the person who is getting nothing out of it.”

Constitutional guarantees defeated by lack of trust and access

Justice Nath noted that a significant number of prisoners were unaware of their right to legal aid, while many others distrusted the system due to past experiences. This erosion of faith, he warned, chips away at the constitutional promise of liberty, dignity, and a fair trial.

“Legal representation must be both available and effective,” he emphasised, cautioning that mere formal compliance with the duty to provide legal aid is insufficient when the assistance is poor in quality or inaccessible in practice.

“Even in cases where they do know, they often refrain from seeking it due to distrust stemming from past experiences. They rather go ahead with engaging some private advocate believing that if they pay someone, he’ll do better than the person who is getting nothing out of it.”

Legal aid “fragmented into silos”

A major challenge, Justice Nath explained, is the disjointed functioning of institutions intended to safeguard the rights of the accused.

“It is not enough to just provide a lawyer; we must ensure that the representation is effective.”
He pointed out that courts, prisons, and legal services authorities often operate in disconnected silos, leaving the poorest and least represented accused “wandering through the system without guidance or accountability.”

“It needs to be understood that this is not merely a formality. It is a constitutional duty- one that can decide whether a person spends years in confinement or walks free with dignity.”

To address this, he called for a unified chain of accountability, ensuring that an individual’s access to legal assistance remains consistent from the first hearing to the final outcome of a case.

“Every law school must treat legal aid clinics as places where justice comes alive, not as extra work to be checked off a list. If a young lawyer’s first real experience of law comes from meeting an undertrial- from seeing his fear and hope- rather than from reading it in a book, we will have already begun to reshape our profession.”

Training, supervision and law school participation crucial

Justice Nath further stressed the need for:

• Enhanced training and supervision for lawyers associated with legal services authorities,
• Structured mentorship to ensure consistent quality of representation, and
• Greater involvement of law schools in legal aid work, encouraging students to treat it as a core professional responsibility rather than optional volunteerism.

He also underscored that certain vulnerable groups—including women prisoners, inmates with mental health concerns, and individuals from marginalised communities—face disproportionate hardship and require targeted support.

“True equality demands that we account for the distinct burdens carried by women and other vulnerable groups, and shape our laws, policies, and institutions in a manner that enables them to stand on equal footing, whether it is through effective legal aid, access to healthcare, safe spaces, or institutional sensitivity.”

Improving legal aid is not charity, but constitutional faith

Calling for a shift in mindset, Justice Nath said that strengthening legal aid should not be viewed as an act of benevolence but as an affirmation of India’s constitutional ethos.

“It is not an act of charity, but an act of faith – faith in the Constitution and faith in the equality of all before the law”

The true test of a justice system lies not in how it serves the powerful, but in how it protects the weakest,” he observed, urging policymakers, legal institutions, and civil society to treat undertrial reform as a constitutional imperative rather than a procedural concern.