Salem Central Prison
prison in Tamil Nadu, India
Salem Central Prison is a prison constructed in 1862 near Hastampatti in Salem, Tamil Nadu, India. It was initially built to house adult prisoners. However, as the need arose to accommodate adolescent prisoners, a jail annex was constructed in 1934 specifically for this purpose.
History
The Prison Regulation Act was first introduced in 1835 under the name Prison Reform Scheme. According to this Act, the Central Jail was built in Salem in the year 1862 during the British rule. The prison has an area of 113.19 acres. The jail has a total of 1432 individual cells. And the British used this jail to keep a series of prisoners. Salem Central Jail is known as Karupukulla Jail (Tamil: கருப்புகுல்லா சிறை) and Alangottai Jail.
In February 1950, the jail witnessed a brutal incident of police shooting and killing 22 inmates.
“Salem Central Prison” enters the record as prison in Tamil Nadu, India. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Salem, Central and Prison can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Salem Central Prison” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Salem, Central and Prison provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q12981212. Authority coordinates are 11.664, 78.146. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1862, 1934, 1835 and 1432.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Salem Central Prison”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Salem Central Prison primary sources, Salem Central Prison archive and Salem research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Salem Central Prison”?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Salem Central Prison” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.