TIHAR JAIL used to be like Dante’s ninth circle of Hell, a place of depravity, brutality and corruption. The biggest and meanest prison in Asia, built on 400 acres in west Delhi, it used to inspire wild-eyed fear because of the killers, drug addicts and swindlers who ran fiefdoms inside with the collusion of venal wardens.

Stroll through the grounds now, though, and you could be at a county garden fête. Immaculate lawns, flower beds arrayed with phlox, dahlias, cineraria and nasturtiums, palm trees swaying in the breeze, tidy hedgerows. The paths are clean, devoid of the filth on Delhi roads. Once inside, out of sight of the perimeter walls and watchtowers, it’s easy to forget that this is a high-security prison.

Apart from birdsong, nothing disturbs the silence in the courtyard of Ward No 7, Jail No 1 (Tihar comprises six jails). Prisoners sit cross-legged on the ground in the bright spring sunshine doing breathing exercises. Others sit in rows inside the barracks, eyes closed in total concentration, inhaling and exhaling.

From medieval hellhole to model prison: that transformation is why prison reformers from all over the world come to study how Tihar has been turned around.

The jail’s holistic approach keeps prisoners busy, gives them new skills, keeps them fit and keeps them connected to the outside world. It provides education and training in computers, weaving, baking, painting, carpentry, sewing and beauty treatment (the women in Jail No 6 run their own beauty parlour).

Prisoners play cricket, football, basketball, chess, Scrabble. Foreign prisoners are allowed to e-mail their families to compensate for lack of visitors, a facility soon to be extended to Indians, too. Potato chips and snacks made by convicts are marketed outside as TJ (Tihar Jail) Specials. So are carrier bags and envelopes made with handmade paper. Paintings are exhibited and sold. The jail also has its own website, created by prisoners.

Every winter the number of inmates rises by about 10 per cent — Indians committing minor but culpable offences in the hope of being thrown inside Tihar with its thick blankets, good food and medical attention. Drug addicts get themselves sent to Tihar because of its detoxification and rehabiliation programme. “They come in, eat well, gain weight, feel better and leave,” says jail superintendent O.P. Mishra, “only to return a few months later, haggard again.”

If all this sounds unusual, the reason is that Tihar Jail is indeed different from many other jails. Only 20 per cent of its inmates are convicts. The rest are “undertrials” — suspects waiting to be charged, waiting for bail or waiting for their trials. They usually spend much longer in jail than if they had been found guilty and served their full sentence. It can take five years just to get bail.

This is a peculiar form of torture caused by India’s clogged judicial system. The legal system was designed for a population of 350 million, not one billion. There are currently 20 million cases winding their way through the courts, hence the delays.

Compared with one judge for every 5,000 people in the West, India has one judge for 100,000 — and lawyers paid by the hour have turned adjournments into an art form. It can take 20 to 30 years for a trial to be completed. “I fought a case where the children grew up and got jobs before their mother got alimony,” says one lawyer, Ajit Panja.

So the biggest agony of Tihar inmates is being innocent but incarcerated until they can prove it. They need help of a special kind. To meet this need, Tihar Jail offers Vipassana, an ancient form of Buddhist meditation designed to help people “to see things as they really are”.

Organised by a non-governmental organisation (NGO) called the Art of Living, it lasts for about 11 days — with breaks — during which, if possible, you neither speak to nor make eye-contact with anyone. Its proponents say that it triggers introspection and creates lasting behavioural changes.

Life in India is hard at the best of times for the poor; life in an Indian jail doubly so. Money is scarce and legal fees consume whatever paltry savings there may be. The inmate is invariably sole breadwinner, so the family suffers.