Another two wings of the jail were demolished after India achieved independence. However, this led to protests from several former prisoners and political leaders who saw it as a way of erasing the tangible evidence of their persecution. The remaining three wings and the central tower were therefore converted into a National Memorial in 1969.

The Govind Ballabh Pant Hospital was set up in the premises of the Cellular Jail in 1963. It is now a 500-bed hospital with about 40 doctors serving the local population.

Freedom Fighter's in Cellular Jail Some of the better known political prisoners incarcerated in the Cellular Jail were Barindra Kumar Ghosh, Upendra Nath Banerjee, Hem Chandra Das, Ullaskar Dutta, Indubushan Roy, Bibhuti Bushan Sarkar, Hrishikesh Kanjilal, Sudhin Kumar Sarkar, Abinash Chandra Bhattacharji & Birendra Chandra Sen. All these prisoners were sent to the Cellular Jail after 1910 on their conviction for participation in the Manictollah Conspiracy case. Vir Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was sent to Andamans on 4th July 1911 with sentence of two transportations for life. When he came to the Cellular Jail his elder brother, Ganesh Savarkar was already there. But the Savarkar brothers came to know about this fact only after having been in Jail over a year.