‘Slumdog’ child star Rubina Ali’s home torn down

MUMBAI – Railway authorities in Mumbai tore down the shanty home of “Slumdog Millionaire” child star Rubina Ali on Wednesday, barely a week after another child actor from the Oscar-winning film was forced into the streets.

Ali, 9, played the character of Latika as a child in the movie, a rags-to-riches romance about a poor Indian boy competing for love and money on a television game show.

Ali’s one-room shack was among several illegal dwellings demolished in a slum adjacent to railway tracks overlooking the posh Bandra suburb, home to many Bollywood stars in India’s financial capital.

“They can stay with me for now,” said Moinuddin Qureshi, Ali’s uncle, who stays in a nearby shack surrounded by open sewers. “But they will obviously have to rebuild it, they need a roof over their heads.”

A despondent Ali was helping her mother pick up wooden planks and salvage household belongings from the site, a Reuters photographer at the scene said. [...]

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