Hyderabad: For residents of Moosanagar and Vinayakaveedhi Rasoolpura areas located on the banks of the Musi River in Hyderabad, water inundating their houses isn’t a new occurrence. But on the night of September 26, they were caught off guard as water released from Osmansagar and Himayatsagar reservoirs gushed into their houses.
They claim that they had no prior information about it. The flood water didn’t just submerge the new bridge of Chaderghat, but also the bastis located on either side.
“Every time they used to inform us, but it didn’t happen this time. Within 15 minutes, water entered our homes, flooding everything,” an affected woman from Moosanagar told Siasat.com.
“Achaanak chodta? KCR accha hai ek number,” said another local as he loaded his belongings into a pickup truck.
Some alleged that the ruling establishment was using water as a weapon to evict them from their houses for the Musi rejuvenation project.
Many left their submerged houses with whatever they could take and took shelter inside a school run by Montfort Social Institute in the basti. Its ground floor was also flooded.
On Saturday, the basti people were still removing the Musi water from their houses, cleaning their rooms with the flood water. Even as the flood level receded, several houses were still flooded.
The residents remained on the street corners throughout the night and through the day, with no food provided to them by the authorities.
There were two medical camps set up in the bastis, one by the staff of Azampura Urban Primary Health Centre (UPHC) and the other by Darulshifa/Jambagh UPHC.
“Cold and cough are the common symptoms being seen. In children, cough, cold and shivering are rampant. Because of constantly being in contact with the flood water, instances of skin infections are more,” said Mateena, an Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA worker) from Darulshifa.
It can be recalled that 415 households were allotted 2bhk houses in Chanchalguda and other places last year, when the first eviction drive was launched in Moosanagar, Rasoolpura and Shankarnagar localities last year, as part of the Musi rejuvenation effort.
Many in Moosanagar are still waiting for allotment of 2bhk houses, so that they could be rehabilitated.
B Vennela is one such woman whose husband passed away recently, leaving her struggling to take care of her two daughters. Her house also got flooded, bringing her and her daughters on the road.
For Palleti Yadagiri, a resident of Vinayaka Veedhi, the flooding of his house was like the last nail in the coffin. His wife was mowed down by a DCM on the busy Koti junction on December 10, 2024. Interestingly, no first information report (FIR) was filed, no CCTV footage of the accident could be secured, and no financial relief was provided to the bereaved family.
Aged around 50, he lives with his three daughters, who work as domestic workers to survive.
Every household in the bastis speaks similar stories of survival, which are not usually seen in wealthy communities living in gated communities, in a protected environment.
Imran Taj, a resident of the basti who was among the first to raise an alarm about the rising Musi level on Friday evening, told Siasat.com that 2bhk houses were given to those who showed bathrooms as houses, and in some cases, multiple houses to a single household. He alleged that ‘those in the middle’ were responsible for the misallocation of bhk houses.
While the residents were left helpless after the latest flooding, they also appealed to the state government to do justice to them, and at least now, provide them a life of dignity and a secure place to live.
