A colonial era prison lost to time

The Old Central Jail, once a Mughal 'serai' and later a colonial prison, exists today in fragments amid weed and a fading memory

- Aheli Das

The echoes of Delhi's colonial past have grown louder in recent months, centred on the memory of a prison where rebels, freedom fighters and conspirators were once locked away - and executed.

On a patch of land beside the mortuary of Maulana Azad Medical College (MAMC) in central Delhi, an unmarked rectangle of tangled undergrowth hides what may be the last physical traces of the Old Central Jail. In 2019, construction workers digging on the campus stumbled upon an underground wall. Suspecting it to be part of the jail’s foundations, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) was alerted and the Public Works Department (PWD) told to halt work.

But since then — silence. Today, the ground appears untouched by spade or story. The thickets conceal any sign of masonry, and administrators insist no formal report on the findings ever reached their desks.

Off the record, one official admitted the discovery stalled construction for months and disputes among agencies ended with the site being quietly covered. “It’s land we can neither build on nor acknowledge,” the official said, pointing to the abandoned plot.