Prisons, Courts, and Legal Aid: Experience of the Fair Trial Programme in Maharashtra

Process

This report looks at FTP’s work and journey during the present cohort, discusses similarities and contrasts between the two cohorts and reflects on the last six years. The work our cohorts do with undertrial prisoners includes:

• Developing and demonstrating an initiative to impart quality legal representation to undertrial prisoners
• Maintaining and deploying data to formulate case strategy, understand challenges in legal aid system and suggest reforms
• Inter-disciplinary intervention through a team of lawyers and social workers
• Collaborative alliance with government, prison and state legal aid institutions to work towards institutionalization of the demonstrated model
• Working with a fellowship model to create a cadre of professionals trained to work in the criminal justice system.

Insights (A story + findings screenshots from the report):

A woman client was arrested on charges of murder was a co-accused with her husband. She was a migrant from Madhya Pradesh belonging to the Gaund nomadic tribe who had come to work as a daily-wage labourer in Pune, and did not speak or understand either Hindi or Marathi. The first bail application filed in her case before filing of chargesheet was rejected due to the public prosecutor’s objections against her release. In the second bail hearing, the court agreed that evidence against her was circumstantial and weak. But her bail was still rejected on the reasoning that she was a migrant and highly likely to abscond.

This report documents data and narratives like these which show the ways in which pre-trial incarceration renders marginalized communities precarious. The report’s findings emerged from the work we do to provide holistic defense and not only meet legal but also non-legal needs of undertrial prisoners.

(A gallery mechanism swiping through data visualisations):