Kanimozhis All?

Total number of male and female convicts in India: 1,23,941; Number of undertrials: 2,50,204

Number of female prisoners: 15,406; Female undertrials: 10,687

Female prisoners compromise 4.1 per cent of the prison population

469 women convicts with their 556 children and 1,196 undertrials with their 1,314 children are in prisons across the country

Official capacity of prisons in India is 3,07,052. But occupancy level is at 122.8 per cent.

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T he Tihar jail in New Delhi was the focus of much attention all of last year as high-profile corporates and politicians—former telecom minister A. Raja, Rajya Sabha member

K. Kanimozhi and Congress leader and ex-president, Indian Olympic Association, Suresh Kalmadi—found their way in here.

While Raja and Kalmadi elicited no sympathy, each time Kanimozhi was denied bail, her family, politicians, legal luminaries and socialites...