Bhattacharya's father, Baikuntha Nath Bhattacharya, was employed with the
Nizam's State Railway in
Hyderabad, while his mother, Charubala Devi, was a homemaker. In 1937, at the age of seven, Bhattacharya moved to
Hyderabad with his family, which had migrated there due to his father's employment in the railway service. Coming from a
Bengali Brahmin background, the family settled in the culturally diverse city, where Urdu held official status. He enrolled at Vivek Vardhini High School, completing his early education up to class five. Immersed in an Urdu-speaking environment, he developed a deep affinity for the language while also gaining familiarity with
Telugu and
Tamil. He later joined
Mahbub College High School in
Secunderabad, where he studied English and Urdu and resided in the hostel. He passed his secondary examination in 1948–49, but financial limitations after his father's retirement prevented him from pursuing higher education. At the age of 20, Bhattacharya joined the
Telangana Peasant Armed Struggle, which inspired his first Urdu novel,
Dharti se Aakash Tak (From the Earth to the Sky), serialized in a Mumbai-based Urdu newspaper. By 1953, he was contributing regular columns to Hyderabad’s Urdu press. Following his father's death in 1955, he moved to
Kolkata in search of employment. == Literary contributions ==