page_title: Cellular Jail
section_title: Inmates
hierarchical_section_title: Cellular Jail / Inmates
caption_attribution_description: मराठी: सेल्युलर जेल येथे सावरकरांचा पुतळा.English: A statue of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar at Cellular Jail.
context_page_description: The Cellular Jail, also known as Kālā Pānī, was a colonial prison in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India. The prison was used by the British for the express purpose of exiling political prisoners to the remote archipelago. Many notable independence activists, including Batukeshwar Dutt, Yogendra Shukla, Vinayak Savarkar
  were imprisoned here during the struggle for India's independence. Today, the complex serves as a national memorial monument.
context_section_description: "The British Raj sent Indian dissidents and mutineers to a remote island penal colony in an 'experiment' that involved torture, medical tests, forced labour and, for many, death." It is estimated that of the total 80,000 political prisoners, the British Raj held at the Kalapani, a very few survived.
  Solitary confinement was implemented as the British government desired to ensure that political prisoners and revolutionaries be isolated from one another. The Andaman island served as the ideal setting for the government to achieve this.
  Most prisoners of the Cellular Jail were independence activists. Some inmates were Fazl-e-Haq Khairabadi, Yogendra Shukla, Batukeshwar Dutt, Babarao Savarkar, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Sachindra Nath Sanyal, Bhai Parmanand, Sohan Singh, Subodh Roy and Trailokyanath Chakravarty 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. The Savarkar brothers, Babarao and Vinayak, did not know that they were in different cells in the same jail for two years.
  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.
  Among the records of the Government of India's Home Department, we found the Empire's response in its Orders to Provincial Governors and Chief Commissioners. "Very Secret: Regarding security prisoners who hunger strike, every effort should be made to prevent the incidents from being reported, no concessions to be given to the prisoners who must be kept alive. Manual methods of restraint are best, then mechanical when the patient resists."
  Hunger strikes by the inmates in May 1933 caught the attention of the jail authorities. Thirty-three prisoners protested their treatment and sat in 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.
  Other prisoners:
  Prisoner 31552 Ullaskar Dutt (made home-made bombs that exploded inside a carriage in Muzaffarpur, 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 (carrying two pistols when he was caught after a post office hold-up)
  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)
  Prisoner 15557 Sher Ali, killed Lord Mayo, the Viceroy of India, who arrived at the Andaman Islands on an inspection tour on February 8, 1872; hanged on March 11, 1872
  Prisoner 12819, Mehtab, and
  Prisoner 10817, Choitun, came the closest to succeeding. They stole away from the islands on March 26, 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. 
caption: Statue of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar at Cellular Jail
exif: {"Image Make": "Samsung", "Image Model": "GT-S3310", "Image XResolution": "180", "Image YResolution": "180", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2008:07:22 18:02:19", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "166", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB"}