Across the country 10,687 women are undertrials waiting day after day, month after month and year after year for their cases to be heard and for bail to be granted in the prisons. Number of female prisoners in jail across the country are 15,406. Female prisoners compromise 4.1 per cent of the prison population.  Officially, capacity of prisons in India is 3,07,052. But occupancy level is at 122.8 per cent. There are 469 women convicts with their 556 children and 1,196 under trials with their 1,314 children are in prisons across the country.

There could not able to appoint a private lawyer for them because a prisoner does not have enough money to pay their private lawyers and the lawyer who was appointed for them by the government for free legal help is usually not interested to meet them. According to the Indian constitution law is equal for everyone but when lawmaker becomes law breaker then rules have been changed.

The Rajya Sabha member K. Kanimozhi was sent to Tihar jail due to her involvement in the high profile 2G spectrum case. She pleaded that in the court she should be set free on the grounds that she is woman, a mother later she was granted bail on November 28, 2011.

In judicial custody for over six months, she was given a separate cell in the women’s section, equipped with a bed, a television and a toilet. But other women under trails, however, were not as fortunate or as privileged as Kanimozhi.

Uneducated women lack awareness about judiciary system and their rights according to “Progress of the World's Women” as per a report by the Assistant secretary general of United Nation Women Lakshmi Puri last year 2011.

“My mother is in jail since June 2006 on the crime of murder and the status of my mother case is under trail for last three years, organizing money to fight mother case has become very difficult to me. Till now I paid 16 thousand rupees to a lawyer and she always asked for more money to continue the case. I don’t think she will leave this place in the future,” said Neeru, a daughter of a prisoner. She would not agree to use her mother's name in the story. She lives in Delhi and works in the copper factory at Mayapuri. However, with 66 per cent of the inmates being illiterate, they are unaware that free legal aid is available to them on the jail premises itself.

(Both Sakshi Chouhan and Rohit Dhyani contributed to this story)