Debdutta Sil, (1906-2003), the owner of Debdutta Studio, was a descendant of the famous philanthropist Motilal Sil. Family dispute had resulted in the murder of his father, Bhagabati Sil. Debdutta had two siblings. Eldest brother Rakhaldas had taken care of the two other siblings when they lived at their Padmapukur residence. Debdutta was the youngest. Debdutta and his middle brother, Gokul Sil, were interested in the cinema business. Their first production — Ahalya (1936) — was a short film made under the banner of Debdutta Films. It was shot at Kali Films. By then, work had begun on 86 BT Road to build a studio. The Sil family owned a lot of land in the Dumdum-Baranagar area. Debdutta had inherited some property there. The studio came up on a portion of that property. Director Jyotish Bandyopadhyay first joined the studio and directed Debdutta Films’ first full-length feature film titled Rajani (1936). Movies made under Debdutta Films continued to be shot there as well as Indira (1937) that was made under Gokul Sil’s GC Talkies banner. Rukmini (1939) was made as a Bengali-Hindi bilingual film. Veterans feel that some song sequences of New Theatres’ Kanan Devi-Pahari Sanyal starrer, Sapure (1939), was also shot there.
However, happy-go-lucky Debdutta was not too calculative about finances. He could not run the studio that opened with a lot of fanfare. In 1943, Debdutta Films announced a film named Chitrangada. Unfortunately, the film was never completed. Later, SD Narang took the studio on lease to set up his Bengal National Studio (see Bengal National Studio). The plot of land later became a part of the Indian Statistical Institute campus after Bengal National Studio closed down.The Geological Studies Unit of the Indian Statistical Institute that now houses the skeleton of the dinosaur Barapasaurus Tagorei was once the address of this studio. The structure of the old electric office can give some idea about the look of the studio which no longer remains.