A condolence meeting, organised by the Suchitra Sen Sanrakshan Parishad , was held at the Pabna Press Club, on Friday .
It mourned her death and decided to seek Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's intervention to get Suchitra's ancestral house converted into a museum in memory of an actress who is often referred to as Great Garbo of Bengali cinema.
The demand to convert the one-storey house on Hemsagar Lane in the Gopalpur locality into a Suchitra museum is not new.
The house is now occupied by the Jamaat-e-Islam's Imam Gajjali Trust that runs a kindergarten school from the building.
"Freeing the house is our top priority now," said Pabna zilla parishad administrator Saidul Haque.
Haque also heads the Suchitra Sen Sankrashakan Parishad.
Suchitra Sen was born in Pabna in 1931 and grew up in her father Karunamoy Dasgupta's house.
In 1947, while a student of Class IX, she was married off to marine engineer Dibanath Sen and left for Kolkata with him.
Dasgupta, a health inspector with the Pabna municipality, retired from service in 1951.
Nine years later, he rented out his house to the district administration and migrated with his family to Kolkata.
The house became the official quarters of senior officials of the district administration.
After Karunamoy Dasgupta's death, the house became "enemy" property and its possession passed on to the government.
The district administration gave the house on annual lease to the Jamaat on March 23, 1987.
The Jamaat set up the trust, whose president is Jamaat's 'Nayeb-e-Aamir', Maulana Abdus Subhan. Abid Hassan, the legal affairs secretary of Jamaat's Pabna unit, is the secretary of the Trust.
The trust appealed to the government for permanent possession of the house in June 1991, but the government turned down the request.
After strident demands to oust the Jamaat from the house and convert it into a museum was raised by Pabna residents and various cultural organisations , the district administration in June 2009, cancelled the lease given to Jamaat.
It then served an eviction notice on the trust. But the trust filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court, which granted a stay on eviction.
According to deputy attorney general Biswajit Roy, the case is pending before the Supreme Court's appellate bench, but no date for hearing has been fixed as yet.
"We are one with the people of Pabna in taking back the house from Jamaat and converting it into a museum," said district commissioner Ashrafuddin.
He had convened a meeting with local journalists and cultural activists on Thursday to discuss this matter -- ironically a day before Suchitra Sen passed in Kolkata's Belle Vue nursing home.
She was 82.
Her biographer Gopal Krishna Roy, one of a few who could interact with her in her late life, recalls Suchitra fondly remembering her childhood in Pabna.
"Those memories are my most cherished ones," Sen is said to have told the biographer once.
The Suchitra Sen Sangrakshan Parishad has, over the past five years, held countless dharnas, demonstrations, meetings, processions and film festivals to press for its demand.
A longtime Gopalpur resident and lawyer Shafiqul Islam recalled that till 1987, the house was beautiful with a garden and flowering trees all around it.
The Trust, he alleged, violated the lease conditions by demolishing the concrete roof of the house to install a corrugated iron one in its place.
Friday evening's meeting at Pabna Press Club saw many speakers appealing to the Prime Minister to pursue the case in the Supreme Court and get the Jamaat's petition quashed.
Trust secretary Abid Hassan said the Jamaat respects Suchitra Sen, but cannot vacate the house till the government provides an alternative accommodation.
Over 300 children study in the school with fifteen teachers employed in it.
Pabna's cultural organisations have expressed condolences and say they will try to convert Suchitra's ancestral house into a museum. They say her death has reinforced their resolve to get this done at any cost.
Suchitra's home is in Gopalpur mahalla of Hemsagar Lane. She studied is the Pabna Government School until Class IX.