The maximum-security facility was immersed in the thick darkness of night as the lights went out. From fifty-four narrow cells came the sound of muffled moans and screams.

Dagshai prison, which is located on a mountaintop and was established in 1849, imprisoned a variety of political dissidents and freedom fighters during the time of British colonial rule. Here, particularly Gorkha soldiers who rebelled in the adjacent battlegrounds during the first war of independence, the Indians who fought in the Revolt of 1857 were held.

Here, too, were Irish soldiers of the Connaught Rangers regiment, who revolted against their English commanders in 1920.

Nathuram Godse, Mahatma Gandhi's murderer, was one of the final prisoners in the jail. He spent the night in a bleak, chilly cell there while traveling to Shimla for his trial.

In the darkness, our burly army guide provided comfort. His hushed stories were not

We resumed our tour of the former Dagshai prison museum in Himachal Pradesh as the lights came back on. According to our guide, who requested anonymity in accordance with protocol, no one has ever escaped its walls except to the graveyard on its grounds.

The cells were intended to be a component of the punishment. The heavily barricaded window in the center hallway was the only source of light in the dim, small space. There was a firing squad execution area and a gallows house close by. James Daly, a 20-year-old Irish soldier who took part in the uprising of 1920, was one of those executed here in this manner.

The torture chamber still has chains on its walls, like the ones from which prisoners were suspended. Those who continued to rebel were put in a cage, a 3 ft wide cell with iron bars on the front (above), and fed only bread and water.

Interestingly, Dagshai has a long history with criminals that far predates the jail.

In the Mughal era, lawbreakers were banished to the dense, mountainous forests here as punishment. Before being exiled in this manner, such offenders were branded on the forehead with a “royal mark” or “daag-e-shahi”, which is how this beautiful Himalayan town got its name.

The curator of the prison museum, military historian Anand Sethi, has close ties to Dagshai too. His father, Balkrishan Sethi, was the first Indian appointed Cantonment Executive Officer, in 1941-42. He lived in a cottage right next to the jail and would later tell his son vivid stories about it.

Sethi says he wondered, from time to time, what became of the prison after Independence. “After all, history lies trapped within its walls,” he adds.

About 20 years ago, he decided to find out. He moved to this nook of the mountains and found that the jail had been invaded by the forest, and was starting to crumble.

Sethi approached then brigade commander (later lieutenant general) P Ananthanarayanan, who greenlit the project to restore the prison. With Sethi overseeing the project, soldiers ushered hordes of monkeys out of the premises, fixed the leaks in the walls, repainted and repaired, but left much of the rest unchanged.

It felt fitting, Sethi says, to turn what might seem like a footnote in India’s history into a museum with a message: that the painful past must never be allowed to repeat itself.

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