Jailhouse mock: A taste of Telangana’s prison tourism initiative

SANGAREDDY, TELANGANA: You forfeit your freedom the moment you step in and the huge door closes behind.

SANGAREDDY, TELANGANA: You forfeit your freedom the moment you step in and the huge door closes behind.

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You then get stripped of your belongings one by one: the pen, the wrist watch, mobile phone and everything else. Stripped to the bone, a coarse khaki white dress with blue stripes is handed over to wear. You are then marched down to a dark cell at the end of a long corridor filled with the overpowering stench from an unattended toilet.

It isn’t the perfect setting for idling away some spare time. But the inconvenience is also a small price to be paid for being possibly the country’s first ‘jail tourist’.

Since the first week of August, the Old District Central Jail at Sangareddy town in Medak district of Telangana has opened its gates for tourists. For a ticket of Rs 500, tourists have the chance of getting a taste of prison life for a day. One gets to dress and eat like a prisoner besides seeing them from close.

But 60 kilometres away from the state capital of Hyderabad, Sangareddy isn’t exactly in the tourist circuit. The concept of holidaying in a jail has also not caught up and the 220-year-old prison now converted into a museum failed to attract a single visitor, until HT chose to take up the unprecedented offer last weekend.

State prison authorities say their “Feel the Jail” programme is a unique initiative aimed for those seeking a first-hand experience of life behind bars.