NEW DELHI: There are 7,925 Indian prisoners languishing in foreign jails, with the UAE leading in the figure at 1,663, followed by Saudi Arabia at 1,363 and Nepal at 1,039. “This data also includes undetrials,” said Minister of State in the Ministry of External Affairs, V Muraleedharan in Parliament.
The lure of the lucre, dream jobs and sometimes unlawful activities are the main factors which have led to the imprisonment. India has signed treaties for transfer of sentenced persons with 35 countries under which Indian prisoners can be brought back to India from some of these countries (subject to the concurrence of both countries and also the prisoner), to serve the remainder of their sentences. This benefit, however, is not available to prisoners awarded a death sentence.
“From January 2006 to January 2022 around 75 Indian prisoners have been transferred under the Repatriation of Prisoners Act, 2003, to serve the remainder of their sentence in India,” Muraleedharan said.
The other countries which house high number of Indian prisoners are Pakistan 628, Qatar 466, Kuwait 460 and Malaysia 290. Sri Lanka, which is often in news due to fishermen from India being detained there, has 76 Indian prisoners.
Indian embassies in different countries pay regular visits to jails to meet the prisoners. The embassy-registered volunteers from Indian community also extend help to the inmates. Meanwhile, back home seven out of every 10 prisoners of foreign origin in Indian jails at the end of 2020 were undertrials with nearly half of such inmates hailing from Bangladesh, according to the recently released Prison Statistics India 2020’ of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).