TIRUCHY: Revenue officials from Thanjavur on Saturday recovered 31.37 acres of government land from SASTRA University following a Madras High Court order and handed it over to the Tamil Nadu Prison Department for establishing an open-air jail.

The action followed a directive issued on Friday by a division bench of Justices SM Subramaniam and C Kumarappan, which asked the Thanjavur District Collector to take possession of the land that had been under the university’s occupation for over 30 years and to evict the institution, restoring the property for its originally planned use as an open-air prison.

A team led by Revenue Divisional Officer P Nithya and Tehsildar G Sivakumar visited the site on Saturday, sealed the building and erected a digital banner announcing the possession order.

The recovered land was later formally handed over to the Prison Department. Prison officials subsequently held a meeting at the site to discuss plans for the proposed open-air prison.