The Jail Reforms project, also referred to as ‘KhulaAsamaan’, is a project based out of Delhi & Gurgaon helping release prisoners whose offense is either bailable or those who have served their due sentence but are only stuck in jails much beyond their tenure due to their (or theirs families) inability to pay the fine money to leave.

The problems of undertrial prisoners in India are the result of a collective judicial system failure. The National Crime Record Bureau’s statistics show that about 77% of Indian jail prisoners are undertrials, amounting to about 4.3 lakhs in 2021. These people are stigmatized, their pleas are seldom heard, their voices and liberties suppressed, and their lives are spent in dark, overcrowded prisons for crimes they may not have committed but because the justice delivery system needs serious amendments. Project KhulaAasman is dedicated to implementing reforms in the Indian judicial system to ensure that no such person, of Free India, remains incarcerated due to their weak economic conditions, especially if their offense is bailable or if they have served their due sentence.

How are they doing this? They want to help two groups of people: Those who are waiting for their trial but have been in jail for a long time, and those who have already served their time but can’t pay to leave. Thus, also decongesting jails and allowing breadwinners to earn a living for themselves and their families.

KhulaAasman is making a big impact in Delhi NCR and Haryana. They are working on this mission under a 2-phased approach, i.e. to finance the bail bond/fine amount through collective donations and alongside propagate to phase out the bail bond system. They hope to impact over 25 lakh people, including the families of those in jail. Their pilot program successfully helped release 11 inmates, with the next 17 underway the release process. The project intends to raise funds to help release approximately 380-400 inmates in the coming year targeting the extremely poor convicts in Phase 1 with a fine/bail bond fee of under INR 25000 each.