Behind Bars: Prison Tales of India’s Most Famous by Sunetra Choudhury. Published in 2017 by Roli Books, M-75, Block M, Greater Kailash II, New Delhi 110048. Pp: xxii + 266. Price: Rs 395.
The brutalities and inequities in India’s prisons have been the subject of numerous books and official reports over the decades. Some of those accounts have been so stark or so hard-hitting that even those inured to large-scale and egregious injustice have been moved to strong emotion. And yet these publications have led to hardly any tangible improvements on the ground; on the contrary, the downward slide has only......