India Justice Report 2025

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Tata Trust has released the India Justice Report (IJR), 2025.

About India Justice Report (IJR), 2025

Introduction: This report evaluates the state of India's four major judicial institutions - police, judiciary, prison and legal aid, which is an important effort to measure the access and quality of justice.
Issued by: Tata Trust in collaboration with various civil society organizations and data partners
Edition: Fourth

Decline in women's participation
- Out of a total of 20.3 lakh personnel in the police force across the country, there are less than 1,000 women in senior positions.
- No state or union territory has been able to fully implement the reservation set for women.
Status of courts and prisons
- Uttar Pradesh has the most overcrowded prisons and more than half of the posts of judges in the High Courts are vacant.
- 91% of the prisoners in Delhi jails are undertrials which shows the slow pace of judicial processes.
Deficiencies in policing infrastructure
- 17% of the police stations in the country do not have CCTVs.
- 30% of the police stations do not have women help desks.
- There is only one civil policeman available per 831 citizens.
Status of financial expenditure
- National per capita expenditure on legal aid: ₹6 per year
- Expenditure on prisons: ₹57 per capita; Andhra Pradesh spends ₹2,67,673 per prisoner
- Expenditure on judiciary: ₹182 per capita; no state spends more than 1% of the annual budget on judiciary.
- National per capita expenditure on police: ₹1,275 — highest across all four pillars.

Large and medium-sized states
- Top performing states
- Karnataka
- Andhra Pradesh
- Telangana
- Kerala
- Tamil Nadu
Bottom ranked states
- West Bengal
- Uttar Pradesh
- Uttarakhand
- Jharkhand
- Rajasthan

Karnataka is the only state that achieved reservation targets in both police and judiciary.
Bihar has the highest representation of women in state police, but 71% of cases in lower courts are pending for more than three years.
Gujarat High Court has the highest number of vacancies of judges and staff.
Sikkim performed best among small states while Goa was the weakest.