The prison is steeped in history -- it used to be a transit prison for thoseeventually taken to other prisons, especially the Cellular Jail in Andamans andtherefore has had among its "guests", greats like Veer Savarkar.Situated in the heart of the city, the sprawling campus even had the likes ofprominent politicians like former chief ministers Annadurai, Karunanidhi andJayalalithaa spending time here. Even the notorious auto Shankar was here.
"But the one incident that remains etched in my memory is the 1999 prisonriots in which 16 people were killed, including jailor Jayakumar and wardenNatarajan," recounted Andrews, a retired head constable, during a last tourof the precinct this week.
Hanging of death row convicts had been stopped here in the seventies and theprison itself was shifted to Puzhal after the old structure started to turnderelict.
Show stopper
A snake has given new meaning to the phrase serpentine queues on TTK road atAlwarpet by slithering down a tree every now and then for a "darshan"causing traffic to stop on this busy road. Normally traffic snarls are a commonoccurrence on this arterial road, but in the past few days, the over five footlong serpent, crawls out of a hole in the tree, to coil itself around thebranches, causing horror sometimes, and fascination at other times among roadusers. The attraction seems to be a nest made by a pair of parrots, or it couldbe just a case of no way out. The traffic policemen have had to do overtimebecause of the rush. Some days ago, the fire department came and tried to flush(animal activists, please note) out the snake with a jet of water, but the snakejust coiled up in its abode. But the strange thing is that the ChennaiCorporation has not thought it fit to call a snake catcher to rescue the reptileand consequently the traffic.