Sunday, August 7 2005 12:23 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi : With their capacity increasing little over the years, jails in the country are accomodating one-and-a-half times the prisoners they can handle, most of them undertrials.

Prisons in the national capital are the most overcrowded with more than twice their capacity stashed into the walls, according to latest figures available with the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC).

Between December 2002 and June last year, the capacity of jails in the country increased by a mere 3,155 to 237,617.

In the same period, the number of prisoners went up by 11,300 to 336,152. This represented overcrowding of 41.47 per cent.

The most significant increase in overcrowding, however, was in Delhi which houses Asia's largest prison Tihar Jail.

Already high at 189.22 per cent in December 2001, overcrowding spiked further at 224.23 per cent by June last year.

In the same period, this went up from 54.06 to 104.41 per cent in Gujarat and nil to 27.13 per cent in Himachal Pradesh.

Other states with high overcrowding were Jharkhand (195.38 per cent), Chattisgarh (110.76), Bihar (76.91) and Madhya Pradesh (71.43) and Uttar Pradesh (52.22).

Overcrowding in Assam's jails quadrupled from 5.32 in December 2001 to 23.15 per cent in June 2004.