Hyderabad: Amid the second wave of COVID-19 in the country, the 135-year-old Nizam era central prison at Warangal will be converted into a super-specialty hospital.
The state government has decided to set up a regional cardiac center at the site of the jail in the heart of Warangal to provide comprehensive medical services to the people.
Earlier in the month of May, Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao during his visit to Warangal to monitor and supervise the COVID-19 treatment.
“The Warangal central Jail would be shifted to the outskirts and an open jail would be set up there. It would be developed in a sprawling campus like the Cherlapally Open Air Jail and it would be like a Correctional Centre. In the present jail premises, a multi-super specialty hospital would be developed with all the facilities. The present MGM Hospital would be converted into a Mother and Child Health Centre (MCH),” he said.
K Chandrasekhar Rao on Sunday in a cabinet meeting directed the jail authorities to hand-over the campus to health department by the month end. A new open-air prison will be built in Mamnoor on the outskirts of Warangal to replace the existing prison.
In this view, Warangal central jail staff shifted inmates to different jails in the state on Tuesday to start the construction.
Of the 954 prisoners in the jail, on the first day over 104, including 39 women were shifted with tight police escort. The men were shifted to Cherlapalli and women to Chanchalguda jail. Inmates will be kept in other jails until the new structures are completed. The Warangal jail had the largest number of prisoners in the state.
About Warangal jail
The Warangal central Jail, built during the Nizam’s rule, has a long history of 135 years. After independence from the freedom fighters during the Nizam’s rule, the Telangana armed peasant struggle, the people’s war and many top maoist leaders were imprisoned in this prison. The prison buildings with this history will soon be merged over time.
Constructed In 1886, before independence, the entire country was under British rule, but the Telangana region remained under Nizam rule. At that time there were Chanchalguda and Musheerabad Central Jails in Hyderabad to house convicts. In 1886 during the regime of the sixth Nizam of Hyderabad Mir Mahboob Ali Khan, a Central Jail was built in Warangal for prisoners from North Telangana. The prison has a total of 54.5 acres of land.