ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE
completed By 1896 at a cost of Rs. 15,000 and short-term convicts from the hills are now confined here instead of being sent down to Vizagapatam.
The same consideration for the hill convict which had prompted the enlargement of the Koraput sub-jail led to the construction of the jail at Párvatípur. Work was begun in 1864, but after Rs. 11,000 had been spent, the plan of the construction was condemned on the ground that the outer wall was too near the buildings inside and that the central space was insufficient for proper ventilation owing to much of it being blocked up by a warder's tower. Meanwhile, from 1873, the buildings were used for the sub-jail, sub -magistrate's cutcherry, and Divisional Officer's office. In 1875 it was ordered that the outer wall should be put back and the warder's tower removed; and in 1880 the jail was at last occupied. It was abandoned again fifteen years later on the grounds that good medical attendance was not procurable, that it was too far from the rail to be properly supervised, that the site was unhealthy and the jail infected with the dysenteric taint and that though it was intended for hill convicts it was so far from the hills that prisoners in it suffered just as much as those who were sent to Vizagapatam, The buildings are at present unoccupied except by some of the stores belonging to the Nágávali project referred to on p. 106 above.
The Vizagapatam District Jail was originally located in the ground floor of the building now occupied by the District Court. In 1839 an upper storey was added to this and the sub-court placed therein. In 1862 obstinate cholera broke out in the jail, the building was condemned and the prisoners were removed into sheds elsewhere. In 1864 the present jail was begun and it was finished in 1872; but it was then pronounced too small and was not occupied. In 1877 estimates for greatly enlarging it were sanctioned, and it was first used after the completion of the extensions in 1878-79. It is now to be rebuilt on the cellular system.
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