Chandola evictions: Homeless, jobless & branded ‘illegal’ overnight | Gujarat

Two months after the demolition of homes in Chandola Basti, many families sleep under open skies, on beds without walls, under plastic sheets, with no jobs, no homes, and no answers.

The Chandola Talab area in Ahmedabad was once home to 6,000–7,000 Muslim families. The demolitions, backed by heavy police deployment and overseen by State Home Minister Harsh Sanghavi, were framed as efforts to remove illegal Bangladeshi immigrants.

Farzana, who had lived in the area for 40 years and possessed all legal documents, said her dignity was still under attack. “Even now, when we look for work, people mock us. They call us criminals, and some even accuse us of being involved in the flesh trade,” she said.

Sheikh Nazir Hussain, a tailor who sold his sewing machine to pay rent, never received a demolition notice and now has no work.

Muskaan Bain had only recently moved into her new home, built by selling her jewellery and taking loans. Now, homeless and jobless, she lives with her husband and three children, gathering whatever she can from the rubble. “I sold my ornaments for this house. I just want a roof over my head, nothing more. If my husband can’t find work, I’ll borrow milk for my children,” she said.

Her husband, once a cook, now earns nothing. The family survives on borrowed rations. Many children have dropped out of school, and single women are forced to beg, living in constant fear.

These families are not only victims of demolition, but of lost paperwork, broken promises, and a system that erased their addresses without asking their names. They are citizens, workers, and mothers, now reduced to labels and left behind. In Chandola, plastic sheets may replace ceilings, but the walls of dignity will take far longer to rebuild.

The content above has been generated using a fine-tuned AI model. To ensure accuracy, quality, and editorial integrity, we employ a Human-In-The-Loop (HITL) process. While AI assists in creating the initial draft, our experienced editorial team carefully reviews, edits, and refines the content before publication. At The Federal, we combine the efficiency of AI with the expertise of human editors to deliver reliable and insightful journalism.