The area around Gingee was notorious for malaria. Plagued by the disease, in 1716, the Mughals shifted their headquarters from Gingee to Arcot. During the British and French wars for supremacy of the Tamil Nadu coast, the French conquered Gingee in 1750. For the 10 years that they held the fort, the French lost 1,200 soldiers to malaria.

The British East India Company, which took over in 1760, had no use for this unhealthy and notoriously malaria-prone fort. Governor George Pigot of Madras observed in 1775 that:

“ the prisoners could be sent to Gingee, a place to which nothing could tempt a state to doom any of its subjects, but the great advantages resulting from its situation and strength — a place whose pernicious air and water plunge into irrevocable sickness and pain almost all whom necessity compels to inhabit it for a time. That is the place you have chosen for your prisoners who would suffer there a lingering death.”