Cellular Jail, Aberdeen, Andaman & Nicobar India

 The Cellular Jail, also known as Kala Pani situated in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (India). The prison was known to house many notable Indian activists during the struggle for India's independence. The Cellular Jail is one of the murkiest chapters in the history of the colonial rule in India. The construction of the prison started in 1896 and was completed in 1906. But the history of using the Andaman island as a prison dates back to the Indian rebellion of 1857. The bricks used to build the building were brought from Burma, known today as Myanmar. The penal settlement established in Andaman by the British after the First War of Independence in 1857 was the beginning of the agonizing story of freedom fighters in the massive and awful jails at Viper Island followed by the Cellular Jail. The patriots who raised their voice against the British Raj were sent to this Jail, where many perished.  

Cellular Jail, located at Port Blair, stood mute witness to the tortures meted out to the freedom fighters, who were incarcerated in this jail. The Jail, completed in the year 1906 acquired the name ‘Cellular’ because it is entirely  made up of individual cells for the solitary confinement. It originally was a seven prolonged, puce-coloured building with central-tower acting as its fulcrum and a massive structure comprising honeycomb like corridors. The building was subsequently damaged and presently three out of the seven prongs are intact. The Jail, now a place of pilgrimage for all freedom loving people, has been declared a National Memorial. The Jail Museum here draws your memories back to those years of freedom struggle.

The Cellular jail situated in Port Blair, Andaman Islands  is closely associated with the freedom struggle of India. The  Cellular jail,  built in 1896 was used by the British to transport Indian freedom fighters from the Indian mainland. Thousands of freedom fighters languished for years in solitary confinement in the cells of the Cellular Jail. Today, the Cellular Jail is declared as the National Memorial, a tribute to those who dared to raise their voices against the British rule. Some of the famous inmates of the Cellular jail were Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Dr. Diwan Singh Kalepani, Yogendra Shukla, Bhai Parmanand, and Maulana Ahmadullah. 

The saga of the heroic freedom struggle is brought alive in a moving Sound & Light show at the Cellular Jail. The show is conducted every evening in the premises of Cellular jail which gives us a brief idea about the happenings in the jail prior to Independence in 1947.