Rose a 32-year-old sex worker who was arrested in a police raid was a bundle of nerves when advocate Sunita Salsingikar first met her in a prison in Maharashtra. “She was a simple, quiet woman… she had no idea why she had been arrested,” recalled Salsingikar. That was three years back.

Cut to two months ago, Salsingikar was in for a surprise when she visited the jail. Rose had hardened into a tough-as-nails undertrial. “To adapt to life inside the jail, she became domineering,” said Salsingikar, co-founder of Dard Se Humdard Tak Trust, which provides free legal aid to jail inmates. “From being denied food to the empty promises of her agent, who pretended to have met govt lawyers whatever delays she faced in there turned her bitter and cynical.”

Rose is one of thousands of women in prison across India who collectively represent a worrying national trend. The count of women in Indian prisons has grown faster than the general population has over the last two decades, going by the sixth World Female Imprisonment List released recently by the Institute for Crime and Justice Policy Research (ICPR). The number including both undertrials and convicts has shot up from 9,089 in 2000 to 23,772in 2022, placing India sixth globally after the US, China, Brazil, Russia and Thailand.

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