World’s most terrible cellular jail (Kala Pani) its complete history
There are many jails in the world, but the Cellular Jail, also known as Kala Pani, is the only prison that has been remembered by Indians as well as historians around the world. After all, what used to happen behind the walls of this jail that on hearing its name, people’s hair stood up and they used to tremble with fear.
It is believed that apart from the punishments of Cellular jail, the other torture that was there was food. Now think for yourself, how will it be if you are given a vegetable made from wild grass or water and rice from wild grass to eat. Well, this was the daily food for the prisoners there.
After all, these people were freedom fighters, they knew both fighting and applying tricks, that is, they could be free from there, but still why did no one even thinks of running away from there. You have to read this article to know that.
In the olden times, it was believed that any person who crossed the sea and went away from his land became untouchable, and that person was evicted from his religion, caste, and society and as we told that Cellular Jail Andaman And Nicobar, the capital city of the islands was built on the coast of Port Blair. So it was justified that all the prisoners had to leave their land and cross the sea, due to which they lost their religion and caste and became the Blacksheep of the family.
That is why that place was given the name of Kalapani. But this is not the only reason. Apart from this, the second reason was that this prison is such a hell of this world which was built on the ground, and as we have heard that hell is black. There was also a reason that this place was named Kalapani, so now the question arises here who built this hell (Kalapani Jail) on the ground and why.
Actually, it is from 1857. When India first waged a war for its independence against the British Government, also known as the National Rebellion of 1857. Now the victory in this war was won by the British, but seeing this spark, there was a fear in the mind of the British that if the Indians did not fear the British and the Indians started uniting, then perhaps the British government would find it difficult to stay here.
So there should never be any revolution again on such a large scale, that’s why he made such a prison which instills fear in the hearts of the people, and which are far away from India and that’s how the Andaman Islands were discovered. In India, all the people who went against the rules of the British government, instigated the people for independence, and took the life of a British officer, would have done any such work which the British government felt wrong. They were sent to Viper Island near Andaman Island.
Here in the Cellular Jail of Andaman, the British government used the chain technique, that is, one leg of 50 prisoners was tied with a single chain. Because don’t try to run away from there and by wearing the same chains the British used to break stones from the gangs of those chains. And on Ross Island, buildings, bakeries, swimming pools, and clubhouses were built for the British to live.
But as the pages of history began to turn, the wars of freedom started increasing, due to which the number of prisoners started increasing in Viper Island and then in August 1889, when “Charles James Lyall” became the new Home Secretary of the British Raj, he made this proposal. Why is there no need to build such a prison which will rekindle the sleeping fear in the hearts of the people because it was clear that the Indians no longer had any fear of Viper Jail or of being evicted from the caste?
Then when Charles and A. S Lethbridge reached Port Blair to see the prison system there, he suggested building a Cellular Jail where prisoners would be given punishment worse than death. He made this entire project plan from two-thirds.
- Spokes of a wheel – Due to which a prisoner wants to run away from there, he will be confused as to where to go.
- Panopticon Theory – That is, a structure will be built in the middle of the project from where such monitoring can be done like Panoptics used to do with its 100 eyes. Combining both theories, a three-story watchtower with seven wings of three floors, combined with a total of 693 cells, was designed in the same way.
Then, as soon as the design was ready, the construction of Cellular Jail started in the year 1896 by making laborers from the prisoners of Viper Jail, which took ten years to build, and now it was the turn of the punishment to be the beginning of the story of Kalapani. People would tremble with fear and when you know that going to Kalapani means to experience death a hundred times by the agony of agony, then how can no one be afraid.
In this Cellular Jail Port Blair, every prisoner was kept separately in a small cell whose size used to be 4.5/2.7 meters, and in those jails, only two small pots were given to each inmate, one filled with water and the other which was They had to be used as toilets. The size of those pots was so small that many prisoners thought it better to use the floor than to use them, and the heart used to stop when the prisoners knew that they had to excrete on the ground. And they have to live on the edge of the same excrement.
Due to this unhygienic condition, many prisoners also lost their lives, and the second thing where people were losing their lives the most was oil mining here, with handcuffs in his hand, he used to spin a big mill throughout the day so that oil could be extracted from it by squeezing the coconut with that pressure. Their per day target was to extract 30 pounds of oil, which is impossible, and if the target was not met, British officers would make some people sleep on a slate of ice and beat them with whips. Some were hung with handcuffs on an iron slate in the harsh sun.
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