Yerawada Central Jail

• 1. Introduction

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  Yerawada Central Jail sits in Yerwada, on the outskirts of Pune, and its story runs through nearly every major chapter of modern Indian history. Built in 1871 by the British when the land still lay outside the city limits, it would eventually hold over five thousand prisoners across its 512 acres. Mahatma Gandhi was detained here. Jawaharlal Nehru was detained here. So was the man who would one day become Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, though under very different circumstances. This is not simply a prison. It is a place where some of the defining dramas of the Indian subcontinent were played out behind high walls. What happened inside those walls? Who was held there, and what did they do with the time? And how does a prison built to contain a colonial subject become one of the largest in all of South Asia?

• 2. Built to Contain a Nation

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  When the British completed Yerawada in 1871, they placed it deliberately beyond the edge of Pune, where expansion could happen without disturbing the city. The structure they built was formidable. The main high-security section sits behind four high walls and is divided into multiple security zones and barracks. Among its more unusual features are egg-shaped cells designed specifically for the most dangerous prisoners. The jail's scale eventually made it the largest prison in all of Maharashtra, and one of the largest in South Asia. By 2017, it held more than five thousand prisoners. News reports in 2003 brought unwelcome attention when the Maharashtra State Human Rights Commission issued a notice about overcrowding and poor living conditions inside.

• 3. The Nationalist Prisoners

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  Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Netaji Subhas Bose, Joachim Alva, and Jawaharlal Nehru all passed through Yerawada during the years of British rule. Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was held here in 1924. Mahatma Gandhi's connections to the jail were the most sustained. He was imprisoned here notably in 1932, after his arrest in January of that year, and again in 1942 during the Quit India movement. During the 1932 detention, Gandhi launched an indefinite fast on the 20th of September 1932, to protest the Communal Award concerning depressed classes. The fast ended on the 24th of September 1932, when Gandhi signed an agreement with Dr. Ambedkar inside the jail itself. That agreement became known as the Poona Pact. Gandhi was finally released in May 1933. During the Quit India wave, Kisan Mehta and many other freedom fighters from the Bombay Province joined him behind these walls.

• 4. Emergency and After

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  During the Emergency era of 1975-77, Yerawada shifted from housing independence fighters to holding political opponents of Indira Gandhi. RSS chief Balasaheb Deoras was detained here. So were Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pramila Dandavate, along with Vasant Nargolkar. The jail continued to attract headline figures in the decades that followed. In 1998, social worker Anna Hazare spent a brief period here after losing a defamation case. Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt was imprisoned here in 2007. Scamster Telgi and former underworld figure Arun Gawli also became inmates; Gawli reportedly began his political career while lodged in the facility and was later serving a life sentence there in connection with a murder. The 26/11 Mumbai attacker Ajmal Kasab, jailed in 2008, was hanged and buried at Yerawada on the 21st of November 2012.

• 5. A Smuggler Becomes an Advocate

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  Between 2002 and 2008, a smuggler from Singapore known as Major Paul was transferred to Yerawada from Kolhapur Jail. What he did with that time is among the more unexpected chapters in the prison's history. Paul studied law while incarcerated and turned to activism on behalf of fellow prisoners. His petitions to the Bombay High Court secured the release of scores of people he believed were wrongly imprisoned. One of his own Furlough Applications led directly to changes in the Prison Furlough rules. After his release, he continued prison social work from Pune, and went on to become an Ordained Pastor of the Protestant Church. His story drew enough attention that it was adapted as an episode of the television series "Prayaschit" on Sony TV.

• 6. Life Inside the Walls

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  Yerawada runs programs that go well beyond confinement. In 2002, Asim Sarode, founder of Sahyog Trust, introduced a course in Gandhian principles for inmates. The course runs for a full year and ends with a formal examination; enrollment is optional. The prison also operates its own textile mill, and around 150 inmates, including women, produce nearly five thousand garments daily, which are distributed to jails across Maharashtra. Costumes for Madhur Bhandarkar's 2009 film Jail, including the uniforms of superintendents, prisoners, wardens, and guards, were made here. In 2007, inmates planted 8,500 sandalwood saplings within the central jail compound, while 9,000 saplings of Ashoka (Saraca indica) went into the adjacent open jail. On the 2nd of October 2008, the Maharashtra State AIDS Control Society opened an Integrated Counselling and Testing Centre at the facility; within the following year, 55 inmates including six women tested HIV positive.

• 7. The Open Jail

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  Just outside the main perimeter of Yerawada Central Jail, within the same campus, sits a separate facility called Yerwada Open Jail. It holds life-sentence prisoners who have completed at least five years inside the central jail without incident. The conditions differ significantly: inmates are not placed in cells and live under basic rather than maximum security. More than 150 residents of the open jail cultivate organic vegetables across over five guntha of land, with the produce going to the central prison and to the adjacent women's prison. The compound also maintains a cow shed with 30 cows, and the manure collected is fed back into the farming operation, making the open jail a working agricultural community set within the boundaries of one of South Asia's largest detention complexes.