CELLULAR JAIL
The cellular jail bring back memories of torture chambers during the British Raj, of all those great names who were condemned to a life in the small, dark cells.
The genesis of the Cellular Jail in Port Blair, the capital of the Andaman Islands can be traced back to the British effort of suppressing the rampant hoards of thugs or thuggies who ravaged large tracts of India. However the jail become significant and grasped the imagination of the people of India and abroad. During our freedom struggle, the British began deporting political prisoners to Port Blair. During the first war of Indian Independence 1857,large number of revolutionaries were deported to this Island and were badly treated and made to live in sub-human conditions.
The construction of this jail was started in 1896 and took 14 years to complete. Located at Aberdeen, it stands on an outcrop over looking sessostris Bay facing the Ross Island. The original building was a seven pronged, pucca-coloured brick building with a central tower as the fulcrum. The tower used to house a bell which tolled the hour, but which was also sent into a frantic, frenzied alarm during a crisis.
On each story near the fulcrum, a guard was posted who will walk around like a hand of the clock to get a clear unobstructed view of the verandas, which faced the cells and from which he was protected by iron grilled doors. When the jail was completed in 1910, the Cellular Jail had 698 cells, each cell was 4.5 meters length and 2.7 meters width with a solitary ventilator located three meters above the ground. Thus a prisoner could never see anything nor could communicate with other inmates and to make it more harder for the prisoners, each wing faced the rear of the other.
The quality of life in Cellular jail was very poor. Prisoners were incarcerated, tortured and subjected to most inhuman living conditions by the British officers. In 1942, during the World War II, the Japanese Imperial Forces captured the island and freed the Indian prisoners. On August 15’1947,the day India became Independent, the penal settlement was closed down. On public demand, the central tower of the Cellular jail has been declared a protected monument with plaques put up to commemorate the famous occupiants of these dreadful cells.
