Governments demolished 36,486 houses in 2021 – meaning at least 100 homes were destroyed every day. In other words, at least 567 were evicted every day or 24 people lost their homes every hour.
According to data uploaded on the apex court s website, as on September 1, 2022, there were as many as 70,310 pending cases, which included 51,839 miscellaneous matters and 18,471 regular hearing matters.
It took five hours to raze the two-storey house of Javed Mohammad, the key accused in the Prayagraj violence case to the ground. Like many demolition drives on illegal constructed houses before this, two things were common: heavy police deployment, and a common yellow-orange-hued machine, the JCB.