This book presents a rigorous and nuanced socio-legal examination of the status of undertrial prisoners within the Indian criminal justice system.

Combining doctrinal inquiry with field-based empirical research drawn from prisons situated across varied social and institutional contexts, it analyses the jurisprudential tensions between liberty and detention, the presumption of innocence and the punitive drift of process, and the gap between constitutional promise and lived carceral reality. The study critically engages with questions of bail, delay, legal aid, custodial conditions, procedural fairness, and institutional accountability through the lens of constitutionalism, human dignity, and access to justice. Moving beyond diagnosis, it examines the legal, procedural, and policy dimensions of reform while advancing principled and pragmatic pathways for addressing the persistence of undertrial detention and the systemic concerns that sustain it in contemporary India. Scholarly in method, incisive in analysis, and humane in orientation, the book makes a significant contribution to contemporary legal discourse and will serve as a valuable resource for academics, judges, lawyers, researchers, policymakers, prison administrators, and human rights scholars alike.