State prison overcrowded with 12,324 prisoners more than capacity

The home department, led by CM Devendra Fadnavis, in a written reply to the legislative council, said that by May 2025, the total number of inmates was 39,527

MUMBAI: The home department informed the state legislative council on Wednesday about the state of overcrowding in the state prisons. As of May 2025, the total number of inmates stood at 39,527 against the capacity of 27,184, as per the department.

Shutterstock picture of jail (Shutterstock)

Satej Patil, a Congress member of the state legislative council, raised this issue and demanded measures to solve it. The home department, led by CM Devendra Fadnavis, in a written reply to the legislative council, said that by May 2025, the total number of inmates was 39,527, which is 12,343 more than the capacity. Arthur Road Jail’s capacity is 999, and by May there were 3,268 inmates in that jail.

“Despite the overcrowding in the prisons, the prison administration is taking necessary steps to provide basic facilities and prisoners are regularly taking the benefits of it. The facilities provided to the prisoners include video-conference, television, water cooler with purifier, washing machine, smart card telephone, e-kiosk etc.,” said the reply.

The home department’s reply also said 39,527 prisoners out of 6,003 are illiterate and 5,067 are undertrials. The reply said that the ‘support to poor prisoners’ scheme provides financial aid to economically weak prisoners to pay fines or bail amounts. “To solve the issue of overcrowding, the government is taking several measures such as construction of new jails, providing land available to build new jails and constructing additional new barracks in the existing jails. After completing all this work, the capacity of state jails will be increased by 17,110 and the total capacity of prisoners will become 44,294,” said the reply. It further stated that the process of land acquisition to construct a new jail in Mumbai is under process.