Video | Sudhir Dhawale Spoke With Outlook About Mental Health Crisis in Indian Prisons

01/10/2025

Outlook / by Priyanka Tupe

hindi /en | 46:58 | 2025
Indian Human Rights activist Sudhir Dhawale, imprisoned under UAPA in Bhima Koregaon case, exposes India’s prison mental health crisis: overcrowding, absent psychiatric care, caste-based labor, and systematic erosion of dignity.
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Taloja Jail: Lives Fading in Silence Behind Iron Walls

28/09/2025

Outlook / by Sudhir Dhawale

The author, who spent 10 years in jail, details the painful experiences of the inmates and the cold attitude of the authorities
Narya was a prisoner in Taloja Central Jail, Navi Mumbai. He was young and had already spent a few years in jail. With overgrown hair, a thick moustache and a full-grown beard, he was an eccentric who would roam the prison yard with complete disregard. Since he routinely got into quarrels with the jailer and physical fights with other inmates, people were wary of him.
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An Imprisoned Mind | Mental Health Challenges Among India’s Political Prisoners

28/09/2025

Outlook / by Apeksha Priyadarshini

In Indian prisons, where the incarcerated are robbed of basic human dignity, conversations about mental health are a formidable challenge.
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The impact of the prison architecture on the mental health of prisoners is also brought up by Gautam Navlakha, a septuagenarian human rights defender and journalist, who was arrested in the now infamous ‘Bhima Koregaon’ (BK 16) case—where 16 activists, lawyers and teachers were charged with incitement to riots at Koregaon Bhima in January 2018, following the “Elgar Parishad’ conclave that they participated in on December 31, 2017 at Pune.
…. Jenny Rowena, partner of another BK 16 undertrial prisoner Prof Hany Babu, shares Navlakha’s views on what incarceration robs from an individual. Babu, who is also lodged in Taloja Central jail, completed five years of incarceration as an undertrial this July.
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Also read:

▪ The Cell and the Soul – A Prison Memoir

Author: Anand Teltumbde
Publishing Date: Sep 2025
Publisher: Bloomsbury India
Pages: 256

Noted social activist Anand Teltumbde entered the Taloja Central Prison as accused number 10 in the Bhima Koregaon case and spent 31 months as an undertrial until he was released on bail. As an intellectual who was stripped of his freedom, he lays bares the chilling realities of India’s prisons in his gut-wrenching prison memoir. Part memoir, part diary, Cell and the Soul is a descent into the heart of India’s carceral state, ripping open the belly of the beast-the prison industrial complex-and exposing the brutal, pulsating injustice within.
Read more / order

▪ Sudhir Dhawale: “This is a bigger prison” (The Caravan | by Sudhir Dhawale | Apr 2025)
▪ Sudhir Dhawale interview: ‘The law remains blind to injustice even with the blindfold gone’ (Scroll.in / Feb 2025)
▪ Sudhir Dhawale: ‘Never Imagined Meeting Hardened Criminals’ (Rediff.com / Jan 2025)
▪ Some personal reflections on prison medical care (The Leaflet | by Vernon Gonsalves | Apr 2024)