India Justice Report 2025

Ranking States on the Capacity of Police, Judiciary, Prisons and Legal Aid

India Justice Report 2025

About the India Justice Report 2025

The India Justice Report (IJR) 2025 is India’s first and only comprehensive quantitative index which uses government data to rank the capacity of ‘pillars’ of the formal justice system.

First published in 2019, with the support of Tata Trusts, it continues to track improvements and persisting deficits in each state’s structural and financial capacity to deliver justice based on quantitative measurements of budgets, human resources, infrastructure, workload, and diversity across police, judiciary, prisons, legal aid, and Human Rights Commissions for all 36 states and UTs.

The IJR is a collaborative effort undertaken in partnership with DAKSH, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, Common Cause, Centre for Social Justice, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy and TISS-Prayas.

India Justice Report 2025 India Justice Report 2025

The India Justice Report, first published in 2019 with the support of the Tata Trusts, is a first-of-its-kind national periodic reporting that ranks states' capacity to deliver justice.

Through the filters of human resources, infrastructure, budgets, workload and diversity, it assesses the capacity of four core pillars of the justice system to deliver to mandate: police, prisons, judiciary, legal aid and Human Rights Commissions. Importantly, by comparing data over five years, the IJR assesses efforts governments make year on year to improve the administration of justice. This trend analysis helps discern each state’s intention to improve the delivery of justice and match it with the needs on the ground. To its assessment of police, prisons, legal aid, judiciary, and state human rights commissions, this edition of the IJR draws attention to forensics, mediation, and disabilities.

By bringing previously siloed data all in one place, the IJR provides policymakers with an easy but comprehensive tool. On the one hand, having the data all in one place provides a jumping-off point on which to base holistic policy frameworks while, on the other hand, the itemisation of the data into budgets, human resources, infrastructure, workload and diversity helps to pinpoint low-hanging fruit, which, if tackled early on, can set up a chain reaction reformative of the whole.

The findings of the report are important for donors, civil society and the business community as well because it provides important stakeholders within influential circles with objective data around which to fashion their own recommendations. It allows for participatory dialogues between governments and active citizens of disparate ideologies to be underpinned by objective facts rather than premised in opinion. This enhances the chances for reforms through consensus building.

After all, justice is the business of us all.

As India moves forward into a hundred years of being a democratic, rule of law nation, the promise of rule of law and equal rights will remain hollow unless underwritten by a reformed justice system. Reform is not optional. It is urgent. A well-resourced responsive justice system is a constitutional imperative that must be experienced as an everyday reality available to every citizen.”

— Ms Maja Daruwala,

Chief Editor, India Justice Report

Key Highlights

Justice Highlights from Indian States

Image Gallery