Mamata to inaugurate Alipore Museum today
kolkata: Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will inaugurate the Alipore Museum on Wednesday. The museum has been developed in the premises of the erstwhile Alipore Central Correctional Home on Judges Court Road.
The correctional home was closed in 2019 and all the inmates were shifted to Baruipur Central Correctional Home.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee took the initiative to restore the correctional home buildings and set up a museum to celebrate the 75th year of Indian Independence. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose had contested and won Kolkata's mayoral election in 1930 from a single-accommodation cell inside the Alipore Jail. It was here that Bose had also cooked for his mentor Chittaranjan Das when both were imprisoned at the same time. A young Indira Gandhi visited her father Jawaharlal Nehru, incarcerated in a cell in Alipore Jail. The cells and the buildings where Bose, Nehru and Das stayed were never used to keep other inmates post-Independence and were preserved as relics of history.
The doors to the cells where Bose, Nehru and CR Das were interned and a central watch tower will be open to the public once it is inaugurated.
Moreover, four revolutionaries who later became Mayor of Calcutta had been kept at the jail as prisoners. CR Das, JM Sengupta, Subhas Chandra Bose and Dr BC Roy had served jail terms at the correctional home.
An exhibition on the Independence movement has been created on the first floor of the hospital building while an exhibition with pictures and information about important events from Bose's life is present on the ground floor.
Painters Shuvaprasanna and Jogen Chowdhury along with 10 others have made drawings on the freedom struggle.
Housing and Infrastructure Development Corporation (HIDCO) executed the restoration work. Alipore Central Jail and Presidency Jail played important roles in the Indian national movement. Built in 1906, the jail stood on 15. 5 acres. The main gate building has been restored fully. There will be a cafeteria on the first floor of the building, a ticket room and a cloakroom.
