10 unnatural deaths occur in Indian jails every month

The murder of an inmate in Tihar is no isolated incident, with official data showing that there were 115 "unnatural deaths" in India's jails in 2013, the latest year for which data is available from the National Crime Records Bureau. That's about 10 unnatural deaths every month.

At 5.9 unnatural deaths per 10,000 inmates, Delhi's jails clock more than twice the national rate of 2.8 per 10,000 inmates. Whether this has anything to do with Delhi jails having over twice as many inmates as they are supposed to hold, against a national average of 118% occupancy, is a moot question.

The NCRB's Prison Statistics in India 2013 shows that of the 115 deaths due to unnatural causes, more than half (70) were officially classified as suicides, 12 were attributed to "assault by outside elements" and eight to murders by inmates. With one execution and one death due to firing, that left 23 "others" where causes have not been spelt out.

The highest rates of unnatural deaths (per thousand inmates) were in Jammu & Kashmir, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Delhi and Rajasthan in that order. The lowest rates among bigger states were in undivided Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, Maharashtra and Jharkhand.

The prison statistics also show that barring Chhattisgarh, a state severely affected by Maoist insurgency, Delhi had by far the most overcrowded jails in the country. Chhattisgarh had 15,840 inmates in its jails which had a capacity of just 6,070, thus recording an 'occupancy rate' of 261%. Delhi's 13,552 inmates were stuffed into jails meant to hold 6,250 people, an occupancy rate of 217%. The national average occupancy rate was about 118%, which shows that while jails as a rule are overcrowded in India, Delhi's prisons are almost twice as congested as the average.