The Horror House of Andaman

chapter6

Another gruelling task took place in the oil mill and caused many of the men to collapse from exhaustion. Their bodies covered only with strips of cloth, the prisoners had to manually turn a large wheel, which would press and squeeze coconuts for oil. They were expected to produce 30 pounds of oil a day, a huge amount that most were unable to complete in one work session.

It drove some to insanity. Anup recalls a story he was told of Jugantar party member Ullash Kar Dutta, who was said to have lost his mind after the punishment he received for refusing to produce such an amount.

"He refused to do it since this much of the quota is not done by a bull," Anup says. "He was whipped badly and kept in a hands-up fetter position. When he was released after three days, he was unconscious and later on was found to be abnormal."

Other men were driven to suicide. Indu Bhushan Roy, who was incarcerated in the jail 23 years before Sushil, was said to have been found hanging from the iron vent at the back of his cell, with a noose around his neck made from his own torn clothes.

Once the prisoners had finished the day's arduous labour, their reward was to spend their evenings shackled on the floor in solitary confinement. Left alone in this iron-gated cell each prisoner would sleep beside two small, clay pots: one for water and the other to be used as a toilet. So small in size were the clay pots, that the men had a difficult time in using the empty pot effectively. Some were said to be so desperate that they resorted to using the bare floor.

Writing of his time there, VD Savarkar painted a horrific image of some prisoners having to sleep with their heads "near the nuisance [they] had committed".

But this was all part of the jail's sorrow-filled design. Guards were expected to treat the political prisoners in a way "that would break their spirit and completely demoralise them", Savarkar recalled a high-ranking official from Calcutta saying.

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