"It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones."
Nelson Mandela

Conditions inside Indian prisons are poor at best and abhorrent at worst. Many of these prisons are overcrowded breeding grounds for HIV and TB and torture is commonly practised.¹ This happens despite Indian law that guarantees those who are incarcerated are protected from torture and they also have a right to healthcare.² But the vast majority of incarcerated individuals in India lack access to adequate–if any–medical or mental health care and face myriad other injustices. Given this reality, it is not surprising that mental health disorders are dramatically higher amongst Indian prisoners than the rest of the population.

MBE Co-Authors:
Shivam Singh, MBE, is a bioethicist and graduate of Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Email: shivamsingh15@hotmail.com

Farhad R. Udwadia, MBE, is a bioethicist, HMS Center for Bioethics, and medical student, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Read full article here on Health and Human Rights Journal or here in Psychology Today.