Prisoners were protesting their conditions after another inmate died of dengue fever. Accusations against police who deny shooting to restore order. Across India, the problem of prison overcrowding is serious, affecting a population made up of 69.1% of people arrested while awaiting trial.
Lucknow (AsiaNews/Agencies) - The shooting dead of a prisoner in the state of Uttar Pradesh is refocusing public attention on the issue of prison conditions in India. Shiwa, a prisoner in Fatehgarh District Jail, died in hospital after being shot on Sunday during a prisoners' riot.
The prisoners were protesting the dengue-related death of another of their comrades, Sandeep Yadav, a few hours earlier. The inmates accused the facility's staff of negligence. On Sunday the tension degenerated into violence with clashes in which there were also several injured officers.
The police deny having fired to regain control of the situation, but in a video Shivam himself - before being taken to hospital - said he had been reached by a bullet fired by an agent. An autopsy confirmed the gunshot as the cause of death.
Uttar Pradesh's director general of prisons, Anand Kumar, has ordered an investigation into the incident. "We will clarify how the weapon reached the prison and who shot the prisoner," he said.
Prison conditions are a serious social problem in India: the latest official data available, for the end of 2019, speak of 479 thousand inmates against a capacity of 404 thousand places.
Overcrowding is aggravated by the fact that in 69.1% of cases these are pre-trial detainees, i.e. people who are serving in those conditions a sentence not yet sanctioned by any trial. The most serious problem is health, as the Covid-19 emergency with numerous outbreaks in Indian prisons has shown. Now the issue is likely to arise again with dengue.