Jammu and Kashmir’s prisons are operating at close to 150 per cent occupancy, significantly higher than the national average, making them among the most overcrowded in India.
A majority of inmates in Kashmir are undertrials, with legal experts blaming this on prolonged court cases
Jammu and Kashmir has 4,535 prisoners awaiting trial compared to just 200 convicts
Seventy-seven-year-old Dr. G M Hubbi has often been to prison. The first time he was detained was in 1984, when he was a mainstream leader and was accused of having a soft corner towards National Conference (NC) leader, Farooq Abdullah, who was toppled by his brother-in-law, Ghulam Mohammad Shah, in 1984, whom he replaced as chief minister. Last time, however, when he was in prison in Srinagar for one year that followed the revocation of Article 370, the former separatist leader was lodged in a cramped space, which had little heating arrangements in winter.
“The barrack was crowded. Against what should have been the space for twenty people, there were at least forty. When the power supply would get cut, the heating arrangements rarely worked in winters,” says Hubbi, who has been in and out of the prison after he joined the electoral fray and gave up his regular government job as a BUMS doctor.
Hubbi, who was detained first time after his party, People’s Conference, had opposed the ousting of Farooq Abdullah, is not the only one who has complaints about the overcrowding or non-adherence to jail manuals in prisons. Lawyers and families of incarcerated people also blame the prolonged trials and the jail manual violations for the poor conditions in the prisons.
In Jammu and Kashmir, inmate numbers far exceed the capacity of jails. Official data from the Union Territory’s Prison Department for November 2025 shows that 5,367 inmates were lodged across J&K’s prisons against a capacity of roughly 3,800. This disparity was reiterated in a written reply by the Ministry of Home Affairs to a question in the Rajya Sabha, in December last year, which placed the inmate population at around 5,400 against a capacity of 3,629. With prisons operating far beyond their limits, the situation is exacerbated by the high proportion of 4535 under trial prisoners in J&K prisons with the number of convicts only 200.
Hubbi’s lawyer son, Javed Hubbi, who unsuccessfully contested the elections in 2024 from Charar-i-Sharief constituency, claims that the directives of the Supreme Court, particularly those emphasising bail in minor offences, are rarely followed. “Securing bail is especially difficult in cases registered under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and the Public Safety Act,” he says.
Advocate H C Jalmeria says that cases involving a large number of witnesses often take years to conclude, as courts are required to hear multiple matters simultaneously. “In several cases, the number of witnesses is so high that trials stretch on for many years. Because courts must also prioritise other cases, proceedings are repeatedly delayed, leading to a disproportionately large number of undertrial prisoners,” he says.
Maroofa Naaz, wife of separatist leader Raja Mehraj-ud-Din Kalwal, says that while trials continue in cases accusing him of fuelling separatist activity in Kashmir, he has already spent more than 22 years in prison. Lodged at Tihar Jail, Kalwal has faced multiple trials that have dragged on for years, she says.
“Trails have been going on in several cases against him in Kashmir for a long time, and in some cases, he was kept in prisons in both Jammu and Srinagar,” she says.
The crisis in Jammu and Kashmir, though reflective of a wider national trend, was, however, more severe. While several States and Union Territories operate within or near capacity, J&K’s prisons remain among the most congested, surpassing in numbers only by regions such as Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, and Maharashtra.
The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) prison statistics data of December 31, 2023, noted that Indian prisons had a sanctioned capacity of 4,39,119, but were housing 5,30,333 prisoners, an excess of more than 90,000 inmates. A report on prison conditions presented to the Rajya Sabha and laid before the Lok Sabha in September 2023, recorded a national average prison occupancy rate of 130.2 per cent, against close to 150 per cent for Jammu and Kashmir.
Owing to severe overcrowding and authorities’ concerns over potential law-and-order issues, several Kashmiris have been detained in prisons outside the Union Territory.
Assabah Khan, 38, the wife of separatist leader Farooq Ahmad Dar, who has been lodged in Tihar Jail for over nine years, says incarcerating prisoners outside Kashmir imposes severe hardships on their families. Dar was arrested on charges of allegedly provoking the youth to resort to stone-pelting against security forces in Kashmir. “The kind of stereotyping Kashmiris face today makes it extremely difficult even to find legal counsel,” Khan says. “There is also a heavy financial burden—arranging money to travel and visit my husband in Tihar is not easy. Even if there was a case against him, he should have been lodged in a jail in Srinagar.”
However, officials managing prisons in Kashmir maintain that decisions regarding the placement of detainees are taken at higher administrative levels in the government. Sheikh Zulfkar Azad, Superintendent of Central Jail Srinagar, says the intake of prisoners was not decided locally. “These decisions are taken at the higher level. We are responsible only for the management of the jail,” he says.