SC asks govt to free Suchitra Sen’s Pabna house
The Supreme Court today upheld a High Court (HC) verdict that had directed the government to take over the ancestral house of Bangla film icon Suchitra Sen in Pabna.
The Appellate Division passed the order after dismissing an appeal filed by Imam Gazzali Institute, an organisation of Jamaat-e-Islami, challenging the HC verdict.
The institute has occupied the house for the last 25 years and runs a kindergarten school there.
There is no legal bar for the government now to evict Imam Gazzali Institute from the house of the silver screen legend following the Supreme Court order, Deputy Attorney General (DAD) Ekramul Haque Tutul told The Daily Star.
He also said the government can now possess the land for protecting and preserving Suchitra Sen’s memories there.
The HC on August 21, 2011, directed Imam Gazzali Trust to forgo the possession of the house within two months.
Imam Gazzali Institute later filed a leave to appeal petition with the Supreme Court challenging the HC verdict.
After dismissing the petition, the bench of Justice Surendhra Kumer Sinha, Justice Md Abdul Wahhab Miah and Justice AHM Shamsuddin Choudhury Manik today passed the order.
Suchitra was born on April 6, 1931, at her grandfather's home at Vangabari of Belkuchi upazila of then greater Pabna, but her first home was in Gopalpur, her father Karunamoy Dasgupta's house.
Suchitra Sen, whose real name is Roma Sen, left Pabna along with her family a few months before the partition of the sub-continent in 1947 and settled in India.
Interestingly over the years successive governments extended the single-year lease Jamaat-e-Islami took of the house in 1987 in phases, ignoring demands from intellectuals and general people to reclaim the house from the clutch of religious fundamentalists.
The veteran actress Suchitra Sen passed away on January 17 this year in the eastern city of Kolkata at the age of 82.
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