City workers bulldozed the home of a Slumdog Millionaire child star on Thursday as part of the demolition of dozens of shanties in a Mumbai slum.
Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail, 10, was asleep when a police officer woke him up and told him to leave his family’s home, he said. Shortly after that, the shack and about 30 more were destroyed.
“A police officer took a bamboo stick to hit me, and I was frightened,” Azhar said.
Authorities say his family will be given a new home elsewhere.
Eight Oscars and US$326 million in box office receipts have so far done little to improve the lives of the film’s two impoverished child stars, Azhar and Rubina Ali — who were plucked from the slum to star in the blockbuster.
They have been showered with gifts and brief bursts of fame, but their day-to-day lives are little changed.
On Thursday morning, city workers flanked by policemen arrived as part of a slum demolition drive — common in India’s chaotic cities, where officials struggle to keep crowding under control.
“They didn’t give prior notice. We didn’t even get a chance to take out our belongings,” said Shameem Ismail, Azhar’s mother, who has lived in the shanty town for more than 15 years.
“I don’t know what I am going to do,” she said, sitting on a bed she had dragged from the wreckage. Next to her was a plastic bag stuffed with belongings.
U.D. Mistry, an official with the Bombay Municipal Corp, said the razing was part of a “pre-monsoon demolition drive.
He said only illegally built shanties were bulldozed.
“They were removed. That is the principle,” he said, adding he was not aware that the child star lived in that slum.
Mistry said residents who have lived in the shanty town for more than 15 years — including Azhar’s family — would be resettled elsewhere in government-built housing. He gave no other details, and such official promises of resettlement often amount to nothing. When slum-dwellers are given housing, it is often in poor-quality buildings on the outskirts of cities and far from jobs.
Slumdog filmmakers say they’ve done their best to help the young stars. They set up a trust to ensure the children get proper homes, a good education and a nest egg when they finish high school.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS