The Appellate Division of Bangladesh Supreme Court has ordered immediate takeover of film legend Suchitra Sen’s ancestral house to turn it into a museum.
An Appellate bench under Justice SK Sinha had issued this order on May 4.
The verdict insists on turning Sen’s ancestral house into a museum dedicated to the memory of this film legend whose contribution to Bengali culture makes this necessary. It says no time should be wasted to make this proposed museum a reality.
Those occupying Sen’s ancestral house—Imam Ghazali Institute—must be evicted immediately if that has not already happened, the bench said.
Two writ petitions had been filed on the issue. One was filed by the Imam Ghazali Institute’s Ayub Hossain Khan in 2009 to maintain possession of Sen’s ancestral house and the other pleading to convert the house into a museum was filed by the Human Rights and Peace for Bangladesh (HRPB) in 2011.
The HRPB insisted that the museum would a project befitting the grand legacy of Suchitra Sen.
The High Court threw out the writ by the Imam Ghazali Institute and upheld the one by the HRPB in Aug 2011 and asked the Ghazali Institute to vacate Suchitra Sen’s ancestral house within two months.
The Ghazali appealed against the High Court verdict—one to stay the eviction order and the other to overturn the verdict to convert the house into a Suchitra Sen Museum.
The Appellate Division threw out both the appeal petitions and upheld the High Court’s verdict.
The ancestral house of Suchitra Sen, where she stayed until her late teens, is located at Hemsagar lane in Pabna’s Gopalpur area. –Our Monitor