India, May 23 -- They were assured that their homes would not be touched, with the Western Railway (WR) even announcing on Thursday that bulldozers would not be used against them.

However, on Friday afternoon - the fourth day of WR's anti-encroachment drive in Garib Nagar, Bandra East -- at least five of the 100 homes in the area that the court had exempted from demolition, were rendered unliveable by bulldozer action.

Earlier, WR authorities had promised they would manually dismantle the illegally built upper storeys of the protected homes, so as not to harm the legal ground floor structures. On Friday afternoon however, two bulldozers could be seen dismantling the upper storeys, rendering the ground floors inhabitable.

One of the own...