Dhaka, March 25: Bangladesh may have awarded the Independence Day Award 2008 posthumously to Govinda Chandra Dev, but a media report says the government was still holding his ancestral home.

Dev's ancestral home at Lauta village under Bianibazar upazilla (sub district) in Sylhet in the country's northeast has actually remained in the possession of "some affluent people" of the village.

Efforts by a group that wants to perpetuate Dev's memory to get possession, though not refused by the government, have failed so far, New Age newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Under a law enacted in 1965 after a war with neighbouring India, the then government of East Pakistan had taken over all property owned by religious minorities, especially those who had fled the country.

The law has remained in force in one form or the other since Bangladesh won independence in 1971.

Dev, one of Bangladesh's most renowned philosophers and scholars, had studied in Kolkata under S. Radhakrishnan, who went on to become the president of India.

Dev, who taught at Ripon College, Kolkata, returned to East Pakistan to found Dinajpur Surendra Nath College.

He later moved to Dhaka University where he was the Dean of the Department of Philosophy, The Daily Star newspaper said in a tribute.

Dev was killed on March 25, 1971, the day Pakistan under Gen. Yahya Khan ordered the crushing of the mass movement that later culminated in the freedom struggle.

The award to Dev was to be given on Tuesday.

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