Bholanath Paul was the headmaster of the Hare School. He had a printing press. His son, Suresh Paul, had attempted to cross the English Channel without any external breathing apparatus. Haripriya Paul was Bholanath's grandson. He used to run a photography business from a shop called Bengal Photographers on Lindsay Street. He had inherited this from his maternal grandmother. Unfortunately, that didn't do well and he tried his hand at various businesses. Among these pursuits, he took to organising open air cinemas and tent shows. Initially, tent shows used to be organized at the address where now stands Chhabighar. With funding from the Srimani family, Haripriya had built the permanent building for Chhabighar cinema in the 30s. Right from the beginning, the cinema was double storied and had two lobbies, a balcony and a rear stall. Haripriya had eight daughters and a son. His eldest daughter was named Chhabi. This cinema was named after her. The first film to have been screened there was Rupam Film Company's Sahadharmini that was directed by Anupam Bandopadhyay. It was screened on September 19, 1931. During those days, Haripriya had also dabbled in film production and had produced movies like Raja Harishchandra, Sada Kalo and Dorpochurna. Besides production, he had even planned to build a big studio on 10 bighas of land on Moore Avenue. Though the studio plans never materialised, his single screen business did very well. Chhabighar had a capacity of 670 viewers. Haripriya passed away in 1998. His son, Somnath Paul, started looking after the business in 1972. He, along with V Santaram's son, had first introduced the fore track technology in a Bengali film. He had done that for Tarun Majumdar's Path O Prasad. The cinema was modernized in 1991. In 2008, the UFO digital projection was introduced along with flat screen, 2K projection and Dolby Digital sound by Suranjan Paul. Currently, the cinema has 144 seats in the balcony and 502 seats in the rear stall. Minar-Bijoli-Chhabighar is still a reputed chain in Kolkata. All three cinemas run the same film at the same show time simultaneously.