NEW DELHI, Oct 29: India’s jails hold a disproportionate number of the country’s minority Muslims, a sign of discrimination and alienation from the Hindu majority, according to a report published on Sunday.

In many of India’s states the number of jailed Muslims far exceeds their per centage of the population, The Sunday Express newspaper reported, citing a government report on Indian Muslims’ welfare.

The report said that in Maharashtra state, of which Mumbai is the capital, 32.4 per cent of the inmates are Muslims, who make up only 10.6 per cent of the general population.

In New Delhi, which has a Muslim population of 11.7 per cent, 27.9 per cent of prison residents are Muslim, while in Gujarat state Muslims comprise 25.1 per cent of those jailed and 9.1 per cent of the populace, according to the report.

Gujarat was the scene of India’s bloodiest Hindu-Muslim violence in recent years, when a train fire killed 60 Hindus returning from a religious pilgrimage in 2002. Muslims were blamed for the blaze, and Hindu mobs killed more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims.

The statistics in the government report were supplied by the states, the newspaper said. Inmate figures include convicts and those detained for trials.

Government officials could not immediately be reached on Sunday for comment on the report.

The report said a main factor behind the higher percentage of Muslim prisoners was greater poverty among their community, making them more vulnerable to the law and also more likely to turn to crime.

Among the urban population, 44 per cent of Muslims were below the poverty line, compared to 28 per cent among the rest of the population, the report said.

It said Muslims were also victims of discrimination and suspicion, particularly in the wake of several deadly terror attacks in India blamed on Islamic groups.

Hindus make up about 84 per cent of India’s total population of more than 1.1 billion population, while Muslims account for 13 per cent and Christians 2.4 per cent, according to the latest census figures.—AP