1 Rupee Cellular Jail, Port Blair

The Cellular Jail at Port Blair was built by the British colonial administration between 1896 and 1906 specifically to isolate political prisoners from the Indian independence movement — deportees sent to the Andaman Islands had virtually no chance of organizing resistance or escape. The facility held figures including Bal Gangadhar Tilak's associates and, later, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, who spent over a decade there in solitary confinement. The centenary of its construction prompted this commemorative issue.

The jail's seven wings radiated from a central tower, allowing a single guard to surveil all cell blocks simultaneously — a panopticon design borrowed directly from Benthamite prison theory.