MADURAI: After a brief struggle, the land for constructing the new Madurai Central Prison complex has been finalised and its bhoomi puja was conducted recently. Once constructed, it will become the second prison in Tamil Nadu to be built by the state government through the Tamil Nadu Police Housing Corporation Limited since independence (though additional accommodations have been constructed earlier in prisons).
It may be noted that the British government had constructed almost all the central prisons in the state including the Madurai Central Prison (excluding the Puzhal prision which was constructed by the police housing corporation). The Madurai prison has a jurisdiction of six districts — Madurai, Ramanathapuram, Sivaganga, Dindigul, Theni and Virudhunagar — and has a special prison for women where remand, under-trial prisoners and convicts are lodged.
The Madurai prison was one among the three prisons constructed in 1865 (others are Cuddalore and Tiruchy central prisons), after the Salem Central Prison was built in 1862. In recent years, the existing prison in Madurai city faced multiple issues, including those relating to inmate accommodations, shifting of inmates for court proceedings through traffic-congested areas, the prison’s location in the heart of the city, among others.
