A police team on Wednesday locked up another shanty in the rooftop slum at Karnani Estate that started as the servant quarters for the cooks, khansamas and drivers employed by American and British officers who lived in the central Calcutta building during the 1940s.
On Wednesday afternoon a Kolkata Municipal Corporation team with lawyers and a big team – with dozens of policemen and a few lady constables – arrived at the rooftop slum and served an eviction notice to Hanumanthu Rao. The notice was served in the name of his father who died a year ago.
“They came with a court order to evict my father who passed away,” Rao said. “How can you file a case against a dead person? We have been living here since before my father was born, my mother has been here since she was married, all our government IDs state this as our permanent address. This is our home, we have no other home.”
The locked main door of the residence at Karnani Estate
The Telegraph Online had reported how most of the residents of the rooftop slum at 209, AJC Bose Road have lived all their lives, as did their parents and grandparents, in around 127 dingy tenements with concrete and asbestos roofs, each with at least four members of a family.
Three weeks ago the cops had sealed the single room shanty of Lachmi Bahadur after throwing out her belongings.
A young girl who was standing near Rao’s room when the police team arrived to serve the notice said a female constable slapped her on the chest.
“I went to tell the cops that they had come to the wrong house. That’s when the constable hit me. The slap still hurts. They even pushed aside the lawyer who went to speak on our behalf,” the girl said.
Advocate Sonia Ara said the cops refused to listen to either her or the residents.
“The cops had entered room No. 2 and started throwing out their belongings. I told them the notice was for room No. 1 but they would not admit that they had got the address wrong,” she said.
A member of the displaced family breaks down in tears
A relative of the lady who lives in house No. 2 said: “Is this the right thing to do? My sister-in-law lives here and they came and removed her things when she was away for treatment. She is a cancer patient. Where will she come and stay when she comes back from the hospital?”
The residents said that since April 30 when the cops had turned up first, 10 families have vacated their shanties.