The residents of Ambedkar Nagar and Pimpri Pada in Malad’s Kurar village live on the edge every monsoon. “Each time it rains heavily, we run out of our homes with all our belongings, and sleep in the aangan. It’s no longer safe to stay inside,” says Supriya Santosh Goregaonkar, who lives in a jhopdi with her husband and two children, not too far away from the site, where on July 2, 2019, a retaining wall near BMC’s Malad East reservoir collapsed. Thirty-two slum-dwellers died in the subsequent landslide. “I fear a similar fate,” says Goregaonkar.

For the last 15 days, the homemaker has been sitting on dharna, along with other families from the neighbourhood, demanding that they be moved to nearby transit homes. While state authorities had rehabilitated 86 families to Mahul after the 2019 incident, the remaining residents, comprising close to 150 families, are yet to be given shelter. “They haven’t even rebuilt the wall,” says Anish Yadav, another resident.