The Cellular Jail, also known as Kālā Pānī (), was a British colonial prison in the
Andaman and Nicobar Islands
The Andaman and Nicobar Islands is a union territory of India comprising 572 islands, of which only 38 are inhabited. The islands are grouped into two main clusters: the northern Andaman Islands and the southern Nicobar Islands, separated by a ...
. The prison was used by the
colonial government of India for the purpose of
exiling criminals and
political prisoners
A political prisoner is someone imprisoned for their political activity. The political offense is not always the official reason for the prisoner's detention.
There is no internationally recognized legal definition of the concept, although ...
. Many notable
independence activists were imprisoned there during the
struggle for India's independence. Today, the complex serves as a national memorial monument.
Originally built with seven wings, the building suffered extensive damage during the earthquake in 1941. Later, two wings were dismantled during the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
by the Japanese, who repurposed the bricks for constructing bunkers and other structures. After
India gained independence, two more wings were demolished in the 1950s to make way for the nearby
Govind Ballabh Pant Hospital. Today, only the watchtower and three wings (1, 6, and 7) remain.
History
Although the prison complex itself was constructed between 1896 and 1906, the British authorities in India had been using the Andaman Islands as a prison since the days in the immediate aftermath of the
Indian Rebellion of 1857
The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major uprising in India in 1857–58 against Company rule in India, the rule of the East India Company, British East India Company, which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the The Crown, British ...
.

Shortly after the rebellion was suppressed, captured
prisoners were put on trial, with many of them being executed. Others were exiled for life to the
Andamans to prevent them from re-offending. Two hundred rebels were transported to the islands under the custody of the jailer David Barry and Major
James Pattison Walker, an
Indian Medical Service
The Indian Medical Service (IMS) was a military medical service in British India, which also had some civilian functions. It served during the two World Wars, and remained in existence until the independence of India in 1947. Many of its officer ...
(IMS) doctor who had been warden of the prison at
Agra
Agra ( ) is a city on the banks of the Yamuna river in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, about south-east of the national capital Delhi and 330 km west of the state capital Lucknow. With a population of roughly 1.6 million, Agra is the ...
. Another 733 from
Karachi
Karachi is the capital city of the Administrative units of Pakistan, province of Sindh, Pakistan. It is the List of cities in Pakistan by population, largest city in Pakistan and 12th List of largest cities, largest in the world, with a popul ...
arrived in April 1868. In 1863, the Rev. Henry Fisher Corbyn, of the Bengal Ecclesiastical Establishment, was also sent out there and he set up the 'Andamanese Home' there, which was also a repressive institution albeit disguised as a charitable one. Rev. Corbyn was posted in 1866 as
Vicar
A vicar (; Latin: '' vicarius'') is a representative, deputy or substitute; anyone acting "in the person of" or agent for a superior (compare "vicarious" in the sense of "at second hand"). Linguistically, ''vicar'' is cognate with the English p ...
to
St. Luke's Church, Abbottabad, and later died there and is buried at the
Old Christian Cemetery, Abbottabad. More prisoners arrived from India and Burma as the settlement grew.
[ Source: '']The Hindu
''The Hindu'' is an Indian English-language daily newspaper owned by The Hindu Group, headquartered in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. It was founded as a weekly publication in 1878 by the Triplicane Six, becoming a daily in 1889. It is one of the India ...
'', 21 December 2005. Anyone who belonged to the Mughal royal family, or who had sent a petition to
Bahadur Shah Zafar
Bahadur Shah II, (Abu Zafar Siraj-ud-din Muhammad; 24 October 1775 – 7 November 1862), usually referred to by his poetic title Bahadur Shah ''Zafar'' (; ''Zafar'' ), was the twentieth and last List of emperors of the Mughal Empire, Mughal emp ...
during the Rebellion was liable to be deported to the islands.

The remote islands were considered to be a suitable place to punish the independence activists. Not only were they isolated from the mainland, the overseas journey (''
kala pani'') to the islands also threatened them with loss of caste, resulting in
social exclusion
Social exclusion or social marginalisation is the social disadvantage and relegation to the fringe of society. It is a term that has been used widely in Europe and was first used in France in the late 20th century. In the EU context, the Euro ...
.
The convicts were also used in
chain gangs to construct prisons, buildings, and
harbour
A harbor (American English), or harbour (Commonwealth English; see American and British English spelling differences#-our, -or, spelling differences), is a sheltered body of water where ships, boats, and barges can be Mooring, moored. The t ...
facilities.
By the late 19th century, the
independence movement
Independence is a condition of a nation, country, or state, in which residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory. The opposite of independence is the status of a ...
had picked up momentum. As a result, the number of prisoners being sent to the Andamans grew and the need for a high-security prison was felt. From August 1889
Charles James Lyall served as home secretary in the Raj government, and was also tasked with an investigation of the penal settlement at
Port Blair
Port Blair (), officially named Sri Vijaya Puram, is the capital city of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a union territory of India in the Bay of Bengal. It is also the local administrative sub-division (''tehsil'') of the islands, the headqu ...
.
Both he and
A. S. Lethbridge, a surgeon in the IMS, concluded that the punishment of
transportation
Transport (in British English) or transportation (in American English) is the intentional Motion, movement of humans, animals, and cargo, goods from one location to another. Mode of transport, Modes of transport include aviation, air, land tr ...
to the
Andaman Islands
The Andaman Islands () are an archipelago, made up of 200 islands, in the northeastern Indian Ocean about southwest off the coasts of Myanmar's Ayeyarwady Region. Together with the Nicobar Islands to their south, the Andamans serve as a mari ...
was failing to achieve the purpose intended and that indeed criminals preferred to go there rather than be incarcerated in Indian jails. Lyall and Lethbridge recommended that a "penal stage" should exist in the transportation sentence, whereby transported prisoners were subjected to a period of harsh treatment upon arrival. The outcome was the construction of the Cellular Jail, which has been described as "a place of exclusion and isolation within a more broadly constituted remote
penal
Penal is a town in south Trinidad, Trinidad and Tobago. It lies south of San Fernando, Princes Town, and Debe, and north of Moruga, Morne Diablo and Siparia. Penal is noted as a heartland of Hindu and Indo-Trinidadian culture.
History
Up ...
space."
Architecture

The construction of the prison started in 1896 and was completed in 1906. The original building was a
puce
Puce is a brownish purple colour. The term comes from the French , literally meaning "flea colour".
Puce became popular in the late 18th century in France. It appeared in clothing at the court of Louis XVI. The colour was said to be a favour ...
-colored brick building. The bricks used to build the building were brought from
Burma
Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and ha ...
.
The building had seven wings, at the center of which a tower served as the intersection and was used by
guards to keep watch on the inmates; this format was based on Jeremy Bentham's idea of the
panopticon
The panopticon is a design of institutional building with an inbuilt system of control, originated by the English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century. The concept is to allow all prisoners of an institution to be ...
. The wings radiated from the tower in straight lines, much like the spokes of a wheel.
Each of the seven wings had three stories upon completion. There were no dormitories and a total of 696 cells. Each cell was in size with a ventilator located at a height of .
The name, "cellular jail", derived from the solitary cells, which prevented any prisoner from communicating with any other. Also, the spokes were designed such that the face of a cell in a spoke saw the back of cells in another spoke. This way, communication between prisoners was impossible. They were all in solitary confinement.
The locks of the prison cells were designed in such a way that the inmate would never be able to reach the latch of the lock. The prison guards would lock up the inmates and throw the key of the lock inside the jail. The inmate would try to put his hand out and try to unlock the door but would never be able to do so as his hand would never reach the key.
Notable incarcerations
Sardar Singh Artillery,
Diwan Singh Kalepani,
Yogendra Shukla,
Batukeshwar Dutt,
Shadan Chandra Chatterjee,
Sohan Singh
Baba Sohan Singh Bhakna (4 January 1870 – 20 December 1968) was a Sikh revolutionary, the founding president of the Ghadar Party, and a leading member of the party involved in the Ghadar Conspiracy of 1915. Tried at the Lahore Conspiracy ...
,
Vinayak Savarkar,
Hare Krishna Konar,
Hemchandra Kanungo,
Sachindra Nath Sanyal,
Shiv Verma,
Allama Fazl-e-Haq Khairabadi,
Sudhanshu Dasgupta,
Ullashkar Dutta,
Barindra Kumar Ghosh,
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (28 May 1883 – 26 February 1966 ), was an Indian politician, activist and writer. Savarkar developed the Hindu nationalist political ideology of Hindutva while confined at Ratnagiri in 1922. The prefix "Veer" (mea ...
and
Ganesh Damodar Savarkar
Prison conditions and inmates

Conditions faced by prisoners in the Cellular Jail were frequently abysmal. As noted in a ''
Guardian'' article, prisoner could face "
torture
Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons including corporal punishment, punishment, forced confession, extracting a confession, interrogational torture, interrogation for information, or intimid ...
,
medical test
A medical test is a medical procedure performed to detect, diagnose, or monitor diseases, disease processes, susceptibility, or to determine a course of treatment. Medical tests such as, physical and visual exams, diagnostic imaging, genetic ...
s,
forced labour
Forced labour, or unfree labour, is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, or violence, including death or other forms of ...
and for many,
death
Death is the end of life; the irreversible cessation of all biological functions that sustain a living organism. Death eventually and inevitably occurs in all organisms. The remains of a former organism normally begin to decompose sh ...
."
In response to poor conditions in the Cellular Jail, including the quality of prison food, numerous prisoners went on
hunger strike
A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance where participants fasting, fast as an act of political protest, usually with the objective of achieving a specific goal, such as a policy change. Hunger strikers that do not take fluids are ...
s. Those who did were often
force-fed by the prison authorities.
[
Solitary confinement was implemented as the British government of India wanted to ensure that political prisoners and revolutionaries be isolated from one another. Most prisoners of the Cellular Jail were independence activists. Some inmates were, Fazl-e-Haq Khairabadi, Yogendra Shukla, Batukeshwar Dutt, Vinayak Savarkar, Babarao Savarkar, Sachindra Nath Sanyal, Hare Krishna Konar, Bhai Parmanand, ]Sohan Singh
Baba Sohan Singh Bhakna (4 January 1870 – 20 December 1968) was a Sikh revolutionary, the founding president of the Ghadar Party, and a leading member of the party involved in the Ghadar Conspiracy of 1915. Tried at the Lahore Conspiracy ...
, Subodh Roy
Subodh Roy (1915 – 26 August 2006) (also known as Jhunku Roy) was an Indian revolutionary socialist who was influential in the Indian independence movement, and a politician.
Biography
Subodh Roy was born in 1915 to a rich family at Chitta ...
and Trailokyanath Chakravarty. Many moplahs arrested in the 1921 Malabar rebellion
The Malabar rebellion of 1921 (also called Moplah rebellion, and Mappila rebellion, Malayalam: ''malabār kalāpam'') started as a resistance against the British colonial rule in certain places in the southern part of old Malabar district of pr ...
were also lodged in Cellular Jail. Several revolutionaries were tried in the Alipore Case (1908), such as Barindra Kumar Ghose, the surviving companion of Bagha Jatin, was transferred to Berhampore Jail in Bengal, before his mysterious death in 1924.
Sher Ali Afridi, a former officer in the Punjab Mounted Police, was a life convict in the jail who had been imprisoned for murder. He was sentenced to death on 2 April 1867 and during appeal this was reduced to life imprisonment and he was deported to Andamans to serve his sentence. The 6th Earl of Mayo, Viceroy of India
The governor-general of India (1833 to 1950, from 1858 to 1947 the viceroy and governor-general of India, commonly shortened to viceroy of India) was the representative of the monarch of the United Kingdom in their capacity as the Emperor of ...
from 1869, was visiting the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in February 1872 when he was murdered by Afridi. Sher Ali Afridi wanted to kill the Superintendent and the Viceroy as a revenge for his sentence, which he thought was more severe than he deserved. He said that he killed on the instructions of Allah
Allah ( ; , ) is an Arabic term for God, specifically the God in Abrahamic religions, God of Abraham. Outside of the Middle East, it is principally associated with God in Islam, Islam (in which it is also considered the proper name), althoug ...
. He was subsequently hanged.
In March 1868, 238 prisoners tried to escape. By April they were all caught. One committed suicide and of the remainder Superintendent Walker ordered 87 to be hanged.
Hunger strikes by the inmates in May 1933 caught the attention of the jail authorities. Thirty-three prisoners protested their treatment and sat in a hunger strike. Among them were Mahavir Singh, an associate of Bhagat Singh (Lahore conspiracy case), Mohan Kishore Namadas (convicted in Arms Act Case) and Mohit Moitra (also convicted in Arms Act Case). These three died due to force-feeding
Force-feeding is the practice of feeding a human or animal against their will. The term ''gavage'' (, , ) refers to supplying a substance by means of a small plastic feeding tube passed through the nose (nasogastric tube, nasogastric) or mouth (o ...
.
Other prisoners:
* Prisoner 31552 Ullaskar Dutt (made home-made bombs that exploded inside a carriage in Muzaffarpur
Muzaffarpur () is a city located in Muzaffarpur district on the banks of Burhi Gandak River, Burhi Gandak river in the Tirhut division of the Indian state of Bihar. It serves as the headquarters of the Tirhut division, the Muzaffarpur distri ...
, killing the bridge partners of Douglas Kingsford, the chief presidency magistrate, Mrs. Pringle Kennedy and her daughter, Grace). He was tortured, declared insane due to malarial infection, transferred to the island's lunatic ward at Haddo, and held there for 14 years.
* Prisoner 31549 Barin Ghose
* Prisoner 31555, Indu Bhushan Roy (hanged himself with a strand of torn kurta, "exhausted by the unrelenting oil mill")
* Prisoner 38360, Chattar Singh, who was suspended in an iron suit for three years
* Prisoner 38511, Baba Bhan Singh, who had been beaten to death by David Barry's men
* Prisoner 41054, Ram Raksha, who had starved himself in protest at the removal of sacred Brahminical threads from around his chest
* Haripada Chowdhury (caught in the attempted murder case of the editor of The Englishman (later Statesman) Watson and was sentenced for 10 years and deported to Andaman. Was eventually released in the year 1939. During his capture he was found in possession of a pistol along with numerous bullets of different caliber, which are now on display, along with his photograph, in the Kolkata Police Museum, situated in the premises of North Kolkata DC Office.)
*
* Prisoner 147 Dhirendra Chowdhury (robbery to raise funds for bombs and guns), one of the few survivors of Kalapani
* Naringun Singh (guilty of desertion at Nuddea) (hanged himself in his cell, due to torture by the prison authorities)
* Prisoner 15557 Sher Ali, killed Lord Mayo, the Viceroy of India
The governor-general of India (1833 to 1950, from 1858 to 1947 the viceroy and governor-general of India, commonly shortened to viceroy of India) was the representative of the monarch of the United Kingdom in their capacity as the Emperor of ...
, who arrived at the Andaman Islands on an inspection tour on 8 February 1872; hanged on 11 March 1872
* Prisoner 12819, Mehtab, and
* Prisoner 10817, Choitun, came the closest to succeeding. According to ''The Guardian'', "They stole away from the islands on 26 March 1872, rowing out into the Bay of Bengal on home-made rafts across a 750-mile stretch of turbulent water, dodging schools of bounty hunters who fought over 250-rupee rewards (then £25). Picked up by a British vessel, they persuaded the crew that they were shipwrecked fishermen and eventually pitched up, free, at the Strangers Home for Asiatics in London. The two were fed, clothed and given a bed. But while they slept, Colonel Hughes, the home's proprietor, took photographs that were circulated around the Empire. One morning, Mehtab and Choitun awoke to find themselves shackled and frog-marched aboard a ship bound for India."
* Prisoner 68 Mahavir Singh: "It took a while for the whisper to reach the Yard Five Wing. By then it was 8 pm." The bell rang again. Every prisoner shuffled to his locked gate. "The feeding tube had gone into Mahavir Singh's lungs. They were filled with milk. Doctors were now fighting to revive him. So we shouted 'Inquilab Zindabad' – long live the revolution. 'Inquilab Zindabad'. Twenty-one warders ran out of the Central Tower. 'Inquilab Zindabad'. Truncheons were drawn, a gun was cocked." "Midnight", Dr. Edge noted in the penal colony's hospital log. "Mahavir Singh – dead."
* Prisoner 89, Mohan Kishore, had also been killed. Drowned in milk
* Prisoner 93 Mohit Mitra, killed. Drowned in milk
* Prisoner 61, Narain (having excited sedition in the cantonment at Dinapore) was the first to try to escape. He was fished from the black water, hauled up before Dr Walker and executed.
Mahatma Gandhi
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (2October 186930January 1948) was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalism, anti-colonial nationalist, and political ethics, political ethicist who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful Indian ...
and Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Thakur (; anglicised as Rabindranath Tagore ; 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was a Bengalis, Bengali polymath who worked as a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer, and painter of the Bengal Renai ...
launched a campaign to shut down the jail, and the colonial government decided to repatriate the political prisoners from the Cellular Jail from 1937 to 1938. "The Cellular Jail was forced to empty in 1939. Two years later, the Japanese seized the islands, transforming the penal settlement into a prisoner of war camp, incarcerating the British warders. In 1945 the Andamans would become the first piece of India to be declared independent."
State-wise list of freedom fighters sent to the Cellular Jail:
INA control
The Japanese launched an invasion of the Andaman islands in March 1942, capturing the Cellular Jail and all prison personnel. The Cellular Jail then became home to British prisoners-of-war, suspected Indian supporters of the British, and later of members of the Indian Independence League, many of whom were tortured and killed there by the Japanese. Notionally during this period control of the Islands was passed to Subhas Chandra Bose
Subhas Chandra Bose (23 January 1897 – 18 August 1945) was an Indian independence movement, Indian nationalist whose defiance of British raj, British authority in India made him a hero among many Indians, but his wartime alliances with ...
, who hoisted the Indian National Flag for the first time on the islands, at the Gymkhana Ground in Port Blair, appointed INA General AD Loganathan as the governor of the Islands, and announced the Azad Hind Government was not merely a Government in Exile, and had freed the territory from British colonial rule.
On 7 October 1945 the British resumed control of the Islands, and prison, following the surrender of the islands to Brigadier J. A. Salomons, of the 116th Indian Infantry Brigade, a month after the Surrender of Japan
The surrender of the Empire of Japan in World War II was Hirohito surrender broadcast, announced by Emperor Hirohito on 15 August and formally Japanese Instrument of Surrender, signed on 2 September 1945, End of World War II in Asia, ending ...
, at the end of World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
.
Post Independence
Another two wings of the jail were demolished after India achieved independence. However, this led to protests from several former prisoners and political leaders who saw it as a way of erasing the tangible evidence of their history.
The Govind Ballabh Pant Hospital was set up in the premises of the Cellular Jail in 1963. It is now a 500-bed hospital with about 40 doctors serving the local population.
Cellular Jail was declared a National Memorial by the then Prime Minister of India, Morarji Desai on 11 February 1979.
The centenary of the jail's completion was marked on 10 March 2006. Many former prisoners were celebrated on this occasion by the Government of India
The Government of India (ISO 15919, ISO: Bhārata Sarakāra, legally the Union Government or Union of India or the Central Government) is the national authority of the Republic of India, located in South Asia, consisting of States and union t ...
.
Apart from guided tours, a sound-and-light show is also run in the evenings narrating and showcasing the trials and tribulations of the inmates. It is available in English and Hindi.
In popular culture
'' Kaalapani'', a 1996 Malayalam historical drama
A historical drama (also period drama, period piece or just period) is a dramatic work set in the past, usually used in the context of film and television, which presents history, historical events and characters with varying degrees of fiction s ...
film was based on the prison and its inmates during 1915. Some scenes were shot in the actual prison.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a British writer and physician. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for ''A Study in Scarlet'', the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Hol ...
's second Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes () is a Detective fiction, fictional detective created by British author Arthur Conan Doyle. Referring to himself as a "Private investigator, consulting detective" in his stories, Holmes is known for his proficiency with obser ...
novel, '' The Sign of the Four'', centers around a group of characters who were inmates or guards at the colonial jail in the Andaman islands. One of the characters is an escapee who has returned to England with a native Andamanese man as a companion. The novel characterizes the Andamanese people in a racist manner, by contemporary standards.
Gallery
File:A model of Cellular Jail at Cellular Jail.jpg, Exhibit at Cellular Jail: model of the facility
File:Flogging frame exhibit at Cellular Jail.jpg, Exhibit at Cellular Jail: flogging frame
File:Man operated oil mill exhibit at Cellular Jail..jpg, Exhibit at Cellular Jail: oil mill
File:Cellular Jail, Port Blair, India, inner view of the cell of prisoners.jpg, Inner view of a cell
File:Cellular Jail, Port Blair, India, special condemned cell for keeping the prisoners before hanging to death.jpg, Special condemned cell for keeping prisoners before hanging
File:Cellular jail's hanging cell.JPG, The hanging cell, where three prisoners could be hanged at once
File:Closer view of a cell of Cellular Jail, Port Blair, India.jpg, Exterior view of one wing
File:Cellular Jail, Port Blair, India, night view, March 2016.jpg, Night time view
File:Kalapani 05.jpg, Cellular Jail in the evening
See also
* Charles Tegart, British police commissioner
* Communist Consolidation
* '' Kaalapani'', a 1996 Indian film set in the jail
References
External links
cellularjail.com
{{Authority control
Government buildings completed in 1906
British colonial prisons in Asia
Prisoners and detainees of British India
Defunct prisons in India
History of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands
Indian independence movement
Tourist attractions in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands
Buildings and structures in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands
Monuments and memorials in India
History museums in India
Prison museums in India
Port Blair
1906 establishments in India
20th-century architecture in India
World Heritage Tentative List for India
Prisons in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands
British colonial architecture in India