CHENNAI: When the Central Prison is pulled down - the demolition work is set to start on Wednesday - Chennai will not just lose a landmark. A slice of history will also go down with that.
What started as the Madras Penitentiary in 1837 to house transit convicts who were to face the ‘sazaye kaala paani’ in Andaman became a jail in 1855, when the presently dilapidated edifices were built at the cost of Rs 16,496 on 11 acres of land.
Between then and 2006, when the jail was shifted to Puzhal, famous politicians and notorious hardened criminals had walked through its screeching iron gates.
But the now vacant cells and bare walls have been witness to many interesting anecdotes. Once, at the visitors room a guard found a lady leaning absolutely close to the wire mesh, pretending to talk to a prisoner on the other side. On closer scrutiny, it was found that the lady had hidden a bottle of sarakku (alcohol) in her blouse and the man behind the bars was sucking it through a straw, reminisces a guard.
Others used different techniques to hide their ‘prized possessions’ in unimaginable ways. “An empty plastic filled with ganja was found inserted in the anus of a prisoner. Another one had the soles of his footwear cut to make a hiding place,” recounts the guard.
The 25-feet high walls blocked any view of the outside world but people managed to throw in things over it - mostly ganja and alcohol, says R Nataraj, ADGP-Prisons. That was a luxury enjoyed by prisoners lodged on the cells near the railway tracks.
“The prisoners who have been here preferred the No 2 block. It had natural ventilation,” says the guard. The other preferred block was the hospital block where the prisoner would get a bed, fan, bread and milk and more importantly, the view of the ‘Park’ station that signified outside world and the smell of freedom.
The quarantine block was where prisoners were brought initially for medical examination. “This is the place where big political honchos stayed for a long time. It is separated from the rest of the blocks,” says V Kannadasan, special public prosecutor.
But life in prison should have been treacherous. The toilet is open and the light is missing. “Of course, life was made easier there with the addition of better facilities like say, the supply of mineral water, a table fan and a bed,” says an officer who served in the prison.
In those days there was no nonvegetarian food given to the prisoners.
The food consisted of rice and curry. In their desperation to eat nonvegetarian food, prisoners used to kill the cats, rats and geese and eat them,” says the guard. “The cats now prowl the premises like they are the kings, but earlier, they dared not go near the cells,” he adds.
“The facility was being used to hold remand prisoners and had space for only 1,250 but at any given time we had more than 2,000 inmates though convicts were shifted to Vellore and other bigger facilities, says Nataraj.
“The prison riots of 1999 and the sensational escape of Auto Shankar stumped everybody at that time,’ recounts Nataraj. “The inmates once burnt the jailer in one of the admininstrative rooms. It was a pathetic life for the guards as they were indeed at God’s mercy. A team of 25 guards guarded the prison premises without weapons,” says Kannadasan.