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As many as 70 to 80 homes were demolished in Northwest Delhi’s Shakur Basti by the Indian Railways on Friday, with residents claiming they were not intimated of the action.
Virendra Kohli, pradhan of the settlement that is close to the railway tracks, said, “They did not give us any intimation and they brought the bulldozer today. Around 70 to 80 jhuggis were demolished. These jhuggis would have housed around 300 to 350 people. The walls were all broken down. The officials from the Railways, Delhi Police and Railway Protection Force came around 10 am and the demolition lasted till around 5 pm.”
However, a spokesperson for the Northern Railways said, “Demolition was carried out by the Railways in the presence of the civil police and RPF after giving notices to encroachers, and around 22,000 sqm land has been cleared in view of upcoming projects.”
After the officials left, residents were left staring at the remains of their homes.
Radha Rani (40) said, “They came in the morning and asked us to take our things and vacate. The little that we could save, we did. The rest of our things were all destroyed… our bed was destroyed. This has left us in a bad shape. There were seven of us living in the jhuggi. I have two daughters and a daughter-in-law. Where will we go now? How do we pay rent?”
She said she had a pucca house with brick walls that was completely cleared: “Poora saaf kiya… nothing is left after they brought the machine. The floor was also dug up,” said Rani, who works as a domestic worker, while her sons are daily wagers.
“Do admi aaye the, ek-do jagah bol ke gaye the ki jhuggi tootenge (two people had come and said in a few places that the jhuggis will be demolished). They would come and say this whenever somebody would complain. They came around three days ago. We didn’t think that they would break everything down. I had gone for work today when my daughter-in-law called to say the machine has come to demolish the jhuggi,” she added. Kohli said there are over 1,700 jhuggis in the area and people have been living there for 15 to 20 years.
Another resident, Guddi (35), said, “When I heard of the demolition, I tried to look for some notice. I couldn’t find anything. I thought that like always, they would say something about demolition and not do it. Then they came to demolish it in the morning, and we managed to remove some of our things in time. The rest we lost. What can we do now?”
Four people lived in their home, said Guddi, who also works as a domestic worker.
This is not the first time the area has seen demolitions. In 2015, homes of around 5,000 people in Shakur Basti were demolished from land held by the Indian Railways.
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