JOIN US'Slumdog' kid Rubina turns homeless
Rubina had gone to market when a large posse of Western Railway officials and railway police arrive at the Garib Nagar shanty and began pulling down the structures, which had come up on the railway land.
The railway officials were clear that the huts had encroached on its property, even if one of them belongs to Rubina.
Father injured
There was scuffle in the beginning, in which Rubina’s father Rafiq was hit. He was later taken to Bhabha hospital nearby for treatment. Last week, on May 14, the municipal authorities had demolished portions of the shanties in Bandra. One reason that was cited was the shaties were obstructing a nullah whose witdth got reduced from 25 ft to just eight ft.
The BMC is controlled by the Shiv Sena and the party working president Uddhav Thackeray himself is doing rounds of various parts of the city to check whether pre-monsoon clearing work was going ahead well or not.
The civic officials did not want to take chances, and razed the shanties, including the one that belonged to Rubina’s co-star from the same film Azharuddin, who is currently at Cannes film festival.
One railway official said the authorities undertake demolition of illegal hutments regularly, the only difference this time being the publicity the demolitions attracting due to Slumdog stars.
Rubina’s mother Munni Qureshi does not agree. She said her family has got electricity bills and ration card to prove that they are legal residents of the area. But it was in vain. The demolition squad began its work, notwithstanding the protests.
Munni is upset for the success of the film did not earn any perceptible benefit to the family. A few Congress leaders had pitched in for the families of both Rubina and Azharuddin, asking the state government to give them homes from special quota.
Even the housing agency MHADA sent a proposal for the same. However, nothing on that has come out so far. Rubina and her family, therefore, will spend their night without proper shelter, perhaps under the sky.
DH News Service