Homeless seek relief from arrests, demolitions, say they are not beggars

Homeless people, many from denotified tribes, who live on the city’s footpaths and sell items like pens, books and flowers at traffic signals, demanded an end to police detentions and civic demolitions at a press conference organised by Pani Haq Samiti on Wednesday

Mumbai: Homeless people, many from denotified tribes, who live on the city’s footpaths and sell items like pens, books and flowers at traffic signals, demanded an end to police detentions and civic demolitions at a press conference organised by Pani Haq Samiti on Wednesday. They said these actions violate basic human rights.

Homeless seek relief from arrests, demolitions, say they are not beggars

This comes after eviction drives were carried out on December 2 and 5 in Vile Parle, Borivali and Kandivali. “The police came and took away my son’s documents because he lost an academic year. My son supports our family by delivering bottled water and still wants to continue studying, but his education has suffered,” said Sunita Gade, 40 who used to live along the railway tracks at Vile Parle.

Gade said that around 17 families, including hers, were left homeless due to repeated eviction drives. “We have lost even our household things and have now been forced to live on the skywalks,” she said. Although they had documents, including election cards issued since 2006, most of the documents have been lost.

Asha Dubey, 33, who lives on the footpaths along Devidas Lane in Borivali, said civic officials seized school books and bags belonging to her four school-going children. “My elder daughter’s Class X documents were taken too, and I had to struggle to retrieve them from the ward office,” said Dubey, who works as a maid while her husband works as a garbage sorter.

A similar situation was reported by Rukmini Pawar, 35, from Chikuwadi, Borivali. “When my son tried to take back his school bag, the police hit him and he got a fracture on his hand,” she said.

Gade sums the issue up when she says that their generation had stayed illiterate but the least the government could do was not impair the education of the younger generation.

Jagdish Patankar, coordinator of Pani Haq Samiti, said that although the 2011 Census recorded 57,416 homeless people in Mumbai and a 2022 BMC survey found 45,672, the city still lacks adequate shelters. He noted that while the Supreme Court mandates at least one shelter for every 100,000 residents, the BMC has set up only 17 centres. He added that lack of documentation prevents homeless families from getting benefits under schemes such as the Ladki Bahin Yojana.

Human rights lawyer Khalil Ur Rehman said the authorities were misusing the Bombay Prevention of Begging Act (BPBA), 1959, to detain homeless people in beggars’ homes. He said both the BPBA and the Bombay Habitual Offenders Act, 1959, are “discriminatory, casteist and classist in both definition and application with its vague wording granting sweeping discretionary power to the police to apprehend anyone who has no visible means of sustenance”. He described these laws as “colonial hangovers rooted in outdated notions of crime control which are antagonistic to the constitutional values”.

The homeless have demanded that the BMC stop winter demolitions, end arrests under the BPBA and the Habitual Offenders Act, and provide housing relief under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY).