Ctg admin deploys security around historic JM Sen House

Chattogram district administration deployed law enforcers around Jatra Mohon Sen's house, complying with a High Court order asking the authority to protect the historically important structure in Rahmatganj of Chattogram.

Officials of district administration today evacuated the house installing a signboard saying the site is to be conserved for a museum.

Talking to The Daily Star, Mohammad Mominur Rahman, deputy commissioner of Chattogram district administration, said they deployed ten Ansar men to take care of the historic structure in light of a HC instruction issued on January 7.

Mominur said that it was their constitutional obligation to protect the historically important structure as per section-24 of the constitution.

The cultural ministry in a meeting held in 2018 decided to conserve the building given its historical value, he added.

Cultural, social and historical building conservationists hailed the move by the district administration urging them to turn the structures into a museum.

A group of people started demolishing the building in December last year claiming they had bought the property, causing outcry in the port city. Social, cultural and history conservationists rushed to the spot, protested and stopped the demolition.

Since then various human chains and sit-in programmes were held in front of the structures urging the government to take steps.

Aliur Rahman, president of platform to conserve history and glory of Chattogram, told The Daily Star that they were able to protect the glorious anti-British structure from the land grabbers through collective efforts.

"We are happy to see that the government has come up with plan to turn it into a museum. We hope local administration will accelerate the effort to implement the decision," he said.

Anti-British revolutionaries led by Masterda Surya Sen met at JM Sen House in 1930 to raid a British arsenal.