In most states, lawyers visited prisons less than once a month, it said. (Representational image)
Amnesty International India Wednesday blamed governments for more than two thirds of prisoners in the country being undertrials and advocated strict enforcement of existing laws and policies to ensure their rights.
Successive governments had acknowledged the problem of 'excessive' undertrial detention, but had not done enough to address it, Amnesty said in Bengaluru.
This was stated in a briefing titled 'Justice Under Trial: A Study of Pre-trial Detention in India' on the state of undertrials/pre-trial detainees in India released at an event.
It said the country has one of the highest undertrial populations in the world with 67 per cent of prisoners as of December 2015 being undertrials.
Blaming governments at both the state and the Centre for this, it said unless existing laws and policies were strictly enforced, and the legal aid system was reformed, the rights of thousands of undertrials would remain at risk.
India's undertrial population was estimated to be the 18th highest in the world and the third highest in Asia.
Amnesty said the country's undertrial population has a disproportionate number of Muslims, Dalits and Adivasis, compared to their share in the overall population, while 29 per cent of undertrials were not formally literate.
To assess the effectiveness of various legal safeguards to prevent excessive undertrial detention, between 2014 and 2016, Amnesty International India said it filed nearly 3,000 Right to Information applications with every district and central prison in the country and various state government departments.
It said while several prisons did not respond to the RTI queries, responses from those did reveal major failures in the treatment of undertrials by the criminal justice system.
In most states, legal aid lawyers visited prisons less than once a month, it said, adding that many states have relatively few legal aid lawyers, compared to their undertrial populations.