The case of a homeless woman in a Patna shelter home stayed with Apurva Vivek long after it ended. Despite seeking an abortion and despite the matter reaching the Supreme Court, the woman was unable to access the procedure. She later died after childbirth. For Apurva, the incident exposed the deep gaps that exist at the intersection of institutional care, reproductive rights, and justice. Today, as the founder of Hashiya, she works to address those very gaps by centring the voices and experiences of women who are often overlooked, particularly those living within custodial institutions and prisons.
From Law To Human Rights
Born in Jamshedpur to a doctor father and a lecturer mother, Apurva spent part of her schooling in a boarding school in Andhra Pradesh before returning to Ranchi to complete her education. She later pursued a five-year law degree at Christ University in Bengaluru and briefly worked there.
Her career path shifted when she realised that human rights law was where her interests truly lay. She joined the Human Rights Law Network in Delhi before becoming part of Koshish, a field project of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS).
Koshish emerged from efforts to support destitute people living on the streets and shelters, often processed under the draconian Beggary Law. The project’s work exposed Apurva to some of the harsh realities faced by individuals living within institutional systems.
Examining Institutional Violence
In 2017, Apurva joined Koshish to lead its work with women. Through interviews conducted in custodial institutions, she sought to understand the many forms of institutional violence that shape women’s lives.
Her work examined not only physical institutions such as prisons, shelter homes and psychiatric hospitals but also social institutions including marriage, childbirth and family structures.
The experiences she documented revealed how multiple systems often intersect to limit women’s autonomy and access to rights.
One of the most significant outcomes of this work was a social audit of 110 shelter homes across Bihar. Conducted by a small team of seven people, the audit helped uncover serious concerns of abuse within shelter homes and contributed to bringing wider attention to the Muzaffarpur shelter home case.
Why She Founded Hashiya
The lessons from these years eventually led Apurva to establish Hashiya.
The name reflects the organisation’s core philosophy. Hashiya seeks to bring voices from the margins to the centre of public conversations and policymaking.
The organisation began by focusing on the intersection of reproductive rights and incarceration. Apurva travelled across Jharkhand, engaging with government health workers ranging from Civil Surgeons to ASHA workers to understand perceptions around abortion, maternal health, and reproductive care.
While speaking to The Logical Indian, Apurva explained that these conversations revealed troubling patterns within the healthcare system.
Women frequently described experiences of obstetric violence in government hospitals. Many reported being humiliated, scolded, or treated insensitively while in labour. Safe abortion services were reported to be particularly stigmatised and curtailed within the public healthcare system.
Her research also highlighted what she describes as a public-private nexus in abortion services. In some cases, doctors who declined to provide abortion services within government facilities were willing to offer the same services through private practice, creating additional barriers for women seeking care.
Taking Reproductive Rights Inside Prisons
In 2024, Hashiya began working inside Birsa Munda Central Prison in Ranchi with support from the Azim Premji Foundation.
The organisation’s work inside the prison combines legal aid, mental health, rehabilitation support, evidence building, and policy advocacy.
One aspect of the programme focuses on identifying women who have little or no family support and connecting them with a network of pro-bono lawyers. Alongside legal assistance, the organisation conducts skill-building activities, art and craft sessions, film screenings, and family mediation efforts aimed at strengthening support systems for women in custody.
In conversation with The Logical Indian, Apurva highlighted that women often face challenges in prison that differ significantly from those experienced by men.
According to her observations, families are more likely to continue supporting incarcerated men, while women are often abandoned after a relatively short period. This lack of support can increase vulnerability both during incarceration and after release.
For tribal women in Jharkhand, the challenges can be even more complex. Language barriers, cultural differences, and social prejudice often affect their interactions with the criminal justice system. Apurva also pointed to concerns around assumptions linking tribal communities with Naxalite activities, which can have serious consequences for women and families.
Influencing Policy Change
Alongside direct intervention, Hashiya has also worked to influence systemic reform.
Apurva played a key role in drafting provisions related to abortion access and postpartum depression in Jharkhand’s first prison manual, released last year.
The changes address an important gap in prison healthcare. Previously, incarcerated women often required court orders simply to access hospital services related to reproductive health. The new provisions seek to create more accessible pathways to care for women in custody.
For Apurva, policy change is a necessary companion to grassroots intervention. Sustainable impact, she believes, requires both individual support and institutional reform.
Redefining Rehabilitation
At Hashiya, rehabilitation is viewed as a continuous process rather than a single outcome.
The organisation begins building support systems from the moment it establishes contact with a woman. Legal assistance, family connections, skill building, and emotional support are all considered important components of rehabilitation.
Circle discussions and art-based activities create spaces where women can share experiences without judgement. These programmes aim to ensure that women are seen as individuals rather than solely through the lens of their incarceration.
Even small interventions can carry significance. Film screenings, including popular films such as Laapata Ladies, Munna Bhai M.B.B.S., films by Charlie Chaplin, etc. provide moments of relaxation and connection within environments that are often defined by stress and uncertainty.
Hashiya’s rehabilitation efforts equally centers the children of women inmates, both living in prison with them and outside. For the ones inside, the team plans excursions so they get a glimpse of the outside world, apart from engaging them in play based learning. Those outside are connected to relevant social schemes. Apurva emphasized on the need for establishing creches for the children of inmates so they can get a chance at having a normal childhood when they spend a few hours every day outside the prison walls.
Measuring Success Through Human Stories
Apurva places greater value on qualitative change than numerical indicators.
Among the cases that stand out is that of a woman who spent four years in prison in connection with her husband’s death despite being a survivor of his abuse. Through Hashiya’s legal support, she was eventually acquitted.
Another case involved helping a woman in custody access an abortion through the legal system, a process that prevented the social consequences she may have faced upon returning to her village.
For Apurva, these stories illustrate how access to justice, healthcare, and support can transform lives.
Looking Ahead
Recent investigations into allegations of sexual abuse at Birsa Munda Central Prison have resulted in restrictions on access for external organisations, affecting Hashiya’s prison-based programmes.
Although the organisation has permission to expand its work into prisons in Hazaribagh and Jamshedpur, the timeline remains uncertain. Hashiya has responded to this predicament by shifting their focus to the women recently released from jail and their families.
Hashiya further plans to strengthen its focus on sexual and reproductive health and rights, an area that Apurva believes continues to receive insufficient attention because of the stigma surrounding abortion and reproductive healthcare.
Through legal advocacy, research, rehabilitation, and policy reform, Apurva Vivek continues to work towards a simple but often overlooked goal: ensuring that women living on society’s margins are heard, supported, and able to exercise their rights with dignity. She draws strength from the work of Angela Davis, emphasizing on the larger goal of prison abolition due to the inherent injustice in the system of incarceration. With over 75% of the prison population being undertrials, she delves on the alternatives to imprisonment, especially for vulnerable social groups such as women, the sick, the disabled, the old and infirm, etc.
The Logical Indian’s Perspective
Apurva Vivek’s work highlights how conversations around justice and rehabilitation must extend beyond legal processes to include dignity, healthcare, and social support. Her experiences reveal the unique challenges faced by women in custodial institutions, particularly in accessing reproductive healthcare, legal aid, and family support. Through Hashiya, she has sought to address these gaps by combining grassroots interventions with policy advocacy, while centring the voices of women who are often excluded from public discourse. Her work also underscores the need to recognise rehabilitation as an ongoing process that begins long before release and continues through reintegration into society.
As India continues to debate prison reform and women’s rights, could a more gender-responsive approach to incarceration and reproductive justice help create systems that prioritise both accountability and human dignity?
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