Landslide in Ghatkopar West Kills Five, Including Four of a Family

Five people were killed in the early hours of Wednesday when a hillside collapsed onto homes in the Ashok Nagar settlement of Ghatkopar West, Mumbai. The landslide, which struck around 3:30 am during a wet spell, buried several houses under tonnes of boulders and debris, triggering panic across the neighbourhood of around 1,000 residents.

Among the deceased were four members of the Shaikh family, who had moved into a rented home on the hillock just three days earlier. Arif Shaikh, a tailor originally from Jaunpur in Uttar Pradesh, had arrived in Mumbai on Sunday with his wife Marjina and their two young children, Mannat and Aban. His sister Rubina was already living in the area. Arif was hoping to find tailoring work, while Marjina sought odd jobs to help support the family.

Following the disaster, Arif’s father, who lives in Titwala, gathered at Rajawadi Hospital’s postmortem centre. Relatives requested that the bodies of all four family members be taken back to their native village in Jaunpur for their last rites. Police assisted the family with the required permissions and formalities to transport the bodies.

The landslide also claimed the life of Viket, also known as Rahul Yadav, on his birthday. Viket, a young professional who worked from home, was the eldest son supporting his family after his father died when the children were young. His mother, Chaya Yadav, had raised her three sons through domestic work. On the day of the incident, his younger brother Yogesh had bought him a shirt as a birthday gift.

Viket had recently shifted to a rented house three to four homes away within the same chawl. Because his new house did not have a Wi-Fi connection, he had gone to the affected house to use its internet connection to finish his office work alongside his friend, Saddam.

Mohammed Shahid, a resident of the chawl who lives with his father Mohammed Ismail Shaikh, younger brother, and uncle, recalled hearing a sound like a bomb blast at around 3:30 am. Shahid and other neighbours rushed outside to find two to three adjacent houses buried under debris and immediately began helping with the rescue.

A large boulder that crashed down during the hill collapse was halted by a peepal tree located behind the affected house, preventing an even bigger disaster. A rescue official stated that the boulder would be broken into smaller pieces using a breaker and removed after the rescue operation is completed.