Why was cellular jail built in Andaman?
Ethan Hayes
Updated on April 23, 2026
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Correspondingly, why is the Cellular Jail in Port Blair famous?
First opened in 1906, Cellular Jail in Port Blair, Andaman is a great place to learn about the history of India and to pay tribute to the fearless freedom fighters. It served as solitary confinement for exiled political prisoners during the British colonial rule and now it's a national independence memorial.
Furthermore, who built cellular jail? One of the Raj's first acts in 1858 was to set up a penal colony on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and start exiling prisoners to it. It wasn't until decades later in 1893, after the number of banished prisoners became unmanageable, that the decision was taken to build a high-security jail to house them at Port Blair.
Secondly, why it is called Cellular Jail?
The name, "cellular jail", derived from the solitary cells which prevented any prisoner from communicating with any other. Also, the spokes were so 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.
Which Indian freedom fighter was kept in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands jail?
Life in the Jail Notable freedom fighters confined in the jail included Batukeshwar Dutt, Diwan Singh Kalepani, Fazl-e-Haq Khairabadi, and the Savarkar brothers - Babarao Savarkar and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar among others.
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