Prisons in India are overcrowded. Indian prisoners are denied access to lawyers and advisers and compliance with any legal protection. 70% of the prisoners are in pre-trial detention, which means that they are not convicted. This is the highest rate of detainees in the world; that's 300,000 people out of 418,000!
The prisons in Uttar Pradesh are a very clear example of overcrowding: in 2014 there were 88,000 prisoners and two years later, in 2016 the number rose to 133,349. They are overcrowded up to 67%. Of those in custody "in custody", 60% of the prisoners belong to the lower box.
Punishments are common in prisons, although punishments were officially abolished in 1995. Medieval methods such as flogging are used to torture the prisoners.
The proportion of female prisoners is 4%. In the states of Bihar, Jharkand and Chhatisgarh, there was a 14 to 18% increase in female prisoners. What is essential here and should not be neglected: the CPI (Maoist) is particularly active in these three states!
In Indian prisons there are over 1,800 children who grow up there and have no access to education.
Of the prisoners, over 10,000 are revolutionaries and communists. Between 2008 and 204 there were 13,657 who were imprisoned for "Maoism". Most of the prisoners are landless and poor peasants who support the revolutionary movement or have no connection with the CPI (Maoist) at all.
They are all fictitious accusations to keep the prisoners on, but in many cases this is not even necessary to legitimize the detention - because the Hindu state has the repression law “Unlawful Activities Preventions Act” Law under which all activities directed against the Indian state can be charged with the pretext of endangering the "integrity" and "sovereignty" of the Indian state. It is a colonial law that forbids any sympathy with the CPI (Maoist) and the revolutionary fighters. This law arrested doctors who provided medical care in the liberated areas, the “Revolutionary Democratic Front” (RDF) was banned in some states, and international supporters were also banned from entering the country.
So it is easy for the state to lock away anyone who can be dangerous to them. And a great attempt to isolate the revolutionaries and communists.
But even if the situation of political prisoners seems so hopeless. In the prisons in particular, fighting continues and unity is closed and resistance is offered. For example, in 2016 there were two prison riots in Uttar Pradesh, in which the prisoners took a prison director hostage and beat up a deputy prison director. So the prisoners wanted their demands no longer to be beaten and tortured and better food to be enforced. Hunger strikes are another form of organized struggle. At the end of January 2014, hundreds took part in a hunger strike demanding permission to be released on bail, quick and fair negotiations.
The sole accusation of "Maoism", as already mentioned, has to be sufficiently arrested. And the arrests are steadily increasing. On average there are 2276 people a year, that's almost 200 every month!
Another method that the Indian state uses to torture are short-term releases, and shortly afterwards with even more punitive charges to detain those recently released.
No matter how hard the repression strikes, imperialism and the old Indian state fail to stifle the justified resistance, neither in prisons nor in the people's war!
Freedom for all political prisoners in India!