Guwahati, Oct. 28: More than half the jail inmates in Assam are undertrials.

The latest prison statistics released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) revealed that undertrials have outnumbered convicts in the jails of the state. There are 31 prisons in Assam.

According to the NCRB data, in 2015 there were 5,696 undertrials languishing in the state's jails, compared to 3,387 convicts.

In legal parlance, an undertrial is a person charged with a crime but whether he is innocent or guilty has not yet been decided by a court trial. Excessive pre-trial detention violates undertrial prisoners' rights to liberty and fair trial, and adversely impacts their life and livelihood.

One of the main reasons for the high number of undertrials behind bars is pending court trials that are keeping the accused in confinement for a longer period of time.

"Among other factors, shortage of judges can be blamed for a large number of undertrials languishing in jails," noted lawyer P.N. Choudhury told The Telegraph.

He said this problem could be solved through measures like plea bargaining. Plea bargaining is a pre-trial procedure in a criminal case whereby a bargain or deal is struck between the accused and the prosecution with the active participation of the trial judge. In plea bargains, the defendant agrees to plead guilty in return for some concession from the prosecutor.

But the problem is that most of the accused or undertrials here are not aware of plea bargaining or their right to a speedy trial.

There are poor undertrials who cannot afford to hire lawyers or arrange surety for the bail bonds. There were also instances of undertrials being in jail even after completing half of the maximum sentence specified for the crimes they are charged with.

Criminal lawyer Anan Kumar Bhuyan said the number of undertrials in jail also increase because of those charged with crimes of serious nature like terrorism, narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances, dowry deaths and rape, where the court is usually reluctant to grant bail.

The NCRB's prison statistics mentioned that a good number of undertrial prisoners were lodged in jail for committing offences under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, rape, theft and the Arms Act.

In the NCRB report, Assam also found mention among the states where prisons are overcrowded, which means more inmates are in jail than the sanctioned strength. In Assam, 9,097 prisoners are lodged in jail against the sanctioned strength of 8,292.

Some of the other states which are facing the problem of prison overcrowding are Meghalaya, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Kerala, Punjab, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Bengal, Rajasthan and Dadra and Nagar Haveli.