Inside the walls: Stories of suffering, survival and systemic injustice
Born in 1961, Sudha Bharadwaj chose a life of service and struggle over one of comfort and professional prestige. After returning to India with her mother, who later joined Delhi University’s Economics Department, she completed her postgraduate studies at IIT-Kanpur and briefly taught at Delhi Public School. Instead of pursuing an academic or corporate career, she committed herself to working among industrial workers and tribal communities in Chhattisgarh as a trade unionist for nearly three decades and a human-rights activist for two. Her belief in justice and dignity for the marginalised defined her public life. This long journey, however, took a dramatic and devastating turn in August 2018 when she was arrested in connection with the Bhima Koregaon violence. She was first lodged in Pune’s Yerawada Jail and later transferred to Mumbai, spending almost three years in prison before securing bail in 2021. It was inside the Phansi Yard, the death-row section of Yerawada Prison, that she documented her daily experiences, observations, struggles, and emotional battles in notebooks. These writings eventually evolved into her powerful memoir, ‘From Phansi Yard’, a work that blends personal narrative with social insight in a compelling manner.
Her account opens with the shock of her first day in jail, when she was stripped naked for a mandatory search before being issued prison clothing. Yet, in the midst of this humiliation, she also encountered kindness: Professor Shoma Sen, lodged in the adjoining cell, shared her meal with her on that very first evening. This juxtaposition of institutional cruelty and personal solidarity runs throughout the book. Bharadwaj writes with clarity and restraint, allowing the harsh realities of prison life to speak for themselves without melodrama or bitterness.
She introduces the reader to a wide spectrum of women prisoners, each carrying a story shaped by deprivation, betrayal, violence, or sheer misfortune. She describes a young woman punished for helping her sister murder their daughter-in-law; Nepali and Bangladeshi women caught under PITA charges; and survivors of human trafficking who cycle repeatedly in and out of prison, many remaining incarcerated even after receiving bail because they cannot provide financial sureties. Through these vignettes, she exposes how structural inequalities entrap women long before they encounter the criminal justice system.
Among the 350 women she lived alongside, Bharadwaj repeatedly observed that poor, Dalit, and Muslim prisoners faced harsher treatment from both the police and the legal system. The biases of caste, class, and community, she notes, do not fade inside prison walls; they often intensify. Yet amid this environment, she also witnessed small acts of compassion, particularly toward mentally ill inmates who were cared for with unexpected tenderness by fellow prisoners. These gestures reveal a humanity that survives despite institutional indifference.
Several stories in the book remain unforgettable. There is the lawyer mother and her doctor daughter who murdered a doctor who deceived them both, and the well-educated Muslim woman and her younger sister accused of attempting to honey-trap and murder a wealthy senior citizen. In recounting such cases, Bharadwaj challenges simplistic moral judgements and invites readers to confront the complex realities that shape women’s entry into crime.
She writes candidly about the functioning of Indian prisons, observing that rules transform noticeably when the rich and influential enter the system. Privilege, she notes, follows individuals even behind bars. At the same time, she praises the affection shown by prison staff toward children below six who live with their incarcerated mothers, especially infants born inside jail.
Prison labour, from kitchen duties to hospital caregiving and factory work, offers inmates modest earnings and emotional refuge from monotony. With seventy-seven concise pieces woven into a seamless narrative, ‘From Phansi Yard’ stands as a stark indictment of systemic discrimination and a reminder that injustice can become a weapon in the hands of the state.