Three years ago, I chose 'Juvenile Justice' as the subject of my research for a communication examination. I was drawn to a cause that was rarely discussed with urgency because of a question that stayed with me: what thirteen- or fourteen-year-old child is inherently evil?

Then, as a thirteen-year-old myself, I tried to understand what the opportunities for reformation looked like in India and around the world, particularly for at-risk youth my age. This eventually sparked a continued interest in prison reformation as I tried to gauge whether prisons in India had been successful in executing the role of rehabilitating individuals who most needed guidance and support or were simply punishing and isolating people with little hope for change.

 

While the intention of the judicial department stands firm in securing justice for every Indian, what I’ve encountered is that the country is home to a vastly overburdened system which seems to offer neither just punishment nor meaningful rehabilitation. Instead, prisons are overfilled with individuals who have not yet been proven guilty, many trapped in prolonged legal casework due to the overwhelming backlog in the courts.

In conversations with families of incarcerated individuals, I learned how months of detention often meant the loss of a family’s primary earner, even as their cases remained painfully stagnant. This was frequently compounded by a lack of legal awareness and limited access to reliable legal aid. This brought the realisation for the need to raise awareness on the plight of prisoners in India and to educate Indians on our right to justice.

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Thus, Project Insaf came to life with the motivation of delivering justice for the 3,80,318 undertrial detainees as well as the thousands of convicts and ex-convicts in India who deserve to be treated with justice.