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When I visited beautiful Andamane Islands I visited this important historic monument: the jail now is a monument but it was a hard place for Indian prisoners who were struggling to attain freedom from the shackles of the British rule.

The construction of the jail was started in 1896 and took 14 years to complete. The original building was a seven pronged, puce-colored brick building with a central tower as the fulcrum. Each wing was four-storied, with cells on the first three and a watchtower on the fourth. When completed in 1910, the Cellular Jail had 698 cells. Each cell was 4.5 meters x 2.7 meters
The increased tempo of the Indian freedom movement in the last few years of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th century led the British to confine separately, prominent rebels who were too dangerous to be allowed to mix with ordinary convicts. The Andamans offered a natural answer and hence political prisoners were deported to the island and kept in solitary confinement. The prisoners included not just those actively involved in the freedom movement, but also journalists convicted of seditious writing. Such men and women were nearly all sentenced to life imprisonment.
Prisoners were incarcerated, tortured and subjected to most inhuman living conditions by the British officers. In 1942 during World War II, the Japanese imperial forces captured the island and freed the Indian prisoners. However, their occupation of these islands was not without its own tales of horror and brutality.
On August 15, 1947, the day India became independent, the penal settlement was closed down. On public demand, the central tower of the Cellular Jail has been declared a protected monument

(from "www.indiavisitinformation.com")