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Mumbai: “It has been nearly 2.5 months since they (the Mumbai Port Authority and Police) broke our homes. But we refuse to die anywhere else. We built this land, and we will die on it too,” says Vasantal Ramalingam Harijan, a 75-year-old Tamizh woman, sitting next to the plot where her 60-year-old house once stood. She stares at the endless sea of rubble that stretches all the way to the ocean – over 400 lives destroyed within hours.  

At 7 am on May 12, 2026, the Mumbai Port Authority (MbPT) and Mumbai Police demolished more than 110 homes on New Tank Road, Darukhana. Residents say the police erected multiple rows of barricades as early as 3 am, and within hours, pulled people out of their homes, locked the doors, and bulldozed all the houses. Since that day, those evicted have refused to leave the area as they protest for justice. Many families continue to live on the roadside in protest despite heatwaves, extreme flooding and police crackdown.  

“The entire country is looking at Delhi, and they should. But where is the outrage for this injustice done to us that has destroyed ours and our children’s lives? It has been more than 70 days since our homes were broken, and we are still sitting on the road in the heat and rain. We put up tin sheds at night and MbPT people come to break it every morning,” shares Durai Raj, 46, with tears in his eyes. Durai’s father was one of the first to settle on New Tank Road, Darukhana after migrating from Arukiri, Kudullur, Tamil Nadu for work on the MbPT Ports before India’s independence. 

The Mumbai Port Authority (MbPT) was established by British Rule in 1873 as the Bombay Port Trust to facilitate the movement of goods through India’s western coast. After Independence, it was placed under purview of the Union government. From the 1990s onwards, ports under its control slowly shut down as the more modern Jawaharlal Nehru Port (JNPT) in Uran gained prominence. Yet, the MbPT continues to control vast swathes of land – approximately 752 hectares of land along Mumbai’s 28-km eastern waterfront from Colaba to Wadala – and is known to be one of the biggest landlords in Mumbai, leasing land to posh real estate developers and the Taj Hotel at a pittance of a price. 

Darukhana falls within the jurisdiction of the MbPT, and the area has multiple ports such as Lakdi Bunder, Coal Bunder and Tank Bunder. Since MbPT’s founding, thousands of workers were brought from across India to build and run its ports. Without any housing provided by MbPT, workers resorted to constructing their own homes on the same land without any water, electricity, schools or other amenities, all of which were finally provided by the state after years of struggle by citizen groups such as the Pani Haq Sangharsh Samiti.

Today, more than 50,000 families live on MbPT land, and around 6,000 families live in the New Tank Road, Darukhana area alone. According to people living in Darukhana, the majority of residents are Dalit and Muslim, from across Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bengal and Bihar. They possess all valid government documents such as voter IDs, ration cards and birth certificates, and many have had family members who worked for the port itself. 

“I used to build and repair trucks, the kinds that carried shipping containers for MbPT,” says Sirfaan Sheikh Suleman, whose 70-year-old house was demolished on May 12. “I shifted here from Kanpur just after independence. I even have documents from before 1995.” 

Sirfaan Sheikh Suleman shows his documents from 1995. Photo: Anjali D

For decades, the Indian state extracted the labour of migrants at low rates to build and run its ports, allowing workers and their families to build houses on the land so they could continue to work on the ports. Now, with its ports no longer functional, residents say the MbPT has ‘no use’ for them anymore and wants to monetise its land at their expense. 

In line with this argument, the MbPT has unveiled projects worth Rs 5,028.17 crore as part of its Eastern Waterfront redevelopment plan that traces its origins back to Nitin Gadkari’s 2014 vision of marinas, floating hotels, cruise terminals and “world-class” luxury tourism. The 470 crore Mumbai Marina Project – 424 yacht berths across a 12-hectare sea area – that likely overlaps with the Darukhana area, has already received bids from the Adani Group, Larsen & Toubro, and three other major infrastructure companies and has a completion target of January 2029.

“These demolitions are all part of clearing land for big players like Adani under the Sagarmala programme,” a member of the Mumbai Port Ghar Haq Sangharsh Samiti (MPGHSS), a resident’s committee fighting slum demolitions across MbPT land, tells The Wire. “If you look at the notices served to residents, there is no precise address. It just says ‘New Tank Road’. We have been told by members of the Sewri police that their original plan was to demolish many more homes – and they would have, had it not been for our resistance.”

Despite Mumbai’s severe vulnerability to rising sea-levels and extreme weather patterns, we continue to witness large-scale commercial projects being introduced in Mumbai – increasing impermeable surface cover and heat, reducing coastal vegetation and mangroves and concentrating........

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