In central Delhi, amid overgrown weeds and the hum of traffic, the memory of a colonial-era prison lies buried, its story fading into fragments. The Old Central Jail, which once housed rebels, freedom fighters, and conspirators under the British Raj, now exists mostly in historical records, local anecdotes, and the occasional archaeological discovery.

On a modest patch of land beside the mortuary of Maulana Azad Medical College (MAMC), an unmarked rectangle of undergrowth marks what may be the last tangible remnants of the jail. In 2019, construction workers digging on the campus stumbled upon an underground wall. The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) was alerted, and the Public Works Department (PWD) was instructed to halt work. Yet, since that discovery, the site has remained untouched. Thickets now conceal the masonry, and administrators insist that no formal report has ever reached their desks.

An official, speaking off the record, said, “It’s land we can neither build on nor acknowledge.” The abandoned plot remains quietly hidden, a ghostly reminder of a past that refuses to fully surface.

The erasure is all the more striking when viewed against the political spotlight cast on another alleged execution site — a section of the Delhi Assembly building. In 2022, the Aam Aadmi Party unveiled it as a “British-era execution chamber,” claiming it was linked to the Red Fort by a tunnel. The BJP dismissed this as political theatre, citing 1912 plans listing it only as a service room. The dispute led to plaque removals, privilege notices, and public debate, turning a contested relic into a political battlefield.

Layers of History

The jail’s origins stretch back to the late 16th or early 17th century, when Mughal noble Farid Khan built a serai — a travellers’ inn — outside the walls of Shahjahanabad. Historian Syed Ahmad Khan described its sturdy construction in Asar-us-Sanadid (1847), noting it offered shelter to those arriving after the city gates had closed for the night.

By the 19th century, the East India Company had converted the serai into a prison. British records, including an 1858 engraving in The Illustrated London News, show Shahjahanabad with its walls intact, the Red Fort prominent, and a small number “23” marking the gaol beyond the eastern wall. The engraving, drawn just after the 1857 uprising, remains one of the clearest visual clues to the jail’s location.

Historian Swapna Liddle observes that the building’s transformation — from inn to prison — reflected the colonial administration’s exercise of control over Shahjahanabad. “The East India Company turned it into a jail in the early 19th century,” she notes.

Local chronicler Sohail Hashmi adds, “During the Quit India movement in 1942, my father was imprisoned there for nearly two years. He was placed in solitary confinement after a hunger strike demanding proper treatment for political prisoners. Later, the inmates were shifted to Tihar.”

Rediscovery and Silence

In 2019, when workers unearthed part of the jail’s foundations on the MAMC campus, it briefly rekindled interest. Nandini Bhattacharya Sahu, joint director general of ASI, confirmed that a stop notice had been issued and a report prepared, but beyond that, agencies involved offered little explanation. “Our role did not go beyond that,” she said. The National Monument Authority has remained silent on the site’s current status.

Residents like Ashraf Khan recall stories from older generations. “A few years ago, we heard the college uncovered some remains, but the site was covered up again. No one here knows why or what really happened,” he said.

Today, traces of the jail survive only in fragments: a broken Hindi board outside MAMC’s Gate No. 1, a fenced park around the Shaheed Smarak Phansi Ghar — the gallows room whose fading inscription reads, “Thousands of patriots… were imprisoned here and tortured… several patriots were executed here.”

Walk the campus now, and it’s easy to forget that beneath the lecture halls and weeds, Delhi once chained its rebels and hanged its martyrs. The 1858 engraving shows the Yamuna curling past Shahjahanabad’s walls; today, traffic roars past an unremarkable building that transformed from a Mughal inn to a colonial gaol, before receding into history.

The Old Central Jail remains a silent witness to Delhi’s layered past, a fragment of memory whose stones may never speak, yet whose echoes of resistance, repression, and resilience linger in the city’s collective consciousness.