Hollywood it isn't as Slumdog star is beaten by police during eviction

Published on Thursday 14 May 2009 22:04

HE HAS attended the Oscars, won an award from the Screen Actors Guild and seen his film earn £140 million at the box office. Yet the young star of Slumdog Millionaire was yesterday beaten with a bamboo stick by Indian police who enforced the demolition of his family's slum home.

Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail, who played the hero as a young boy in the movie which won eight Academy awards, was yesterday ordered out of the temporary makeshift shelter made of plastic sheets over bamboo sticks in a Mumbai slum by the city authorities.

The authorities claim he and other families were squatting on land that was owned by the government.

"A police officer took a bamboo stick to hit me and I was frightened," said Azharuddin, who is ten.

"We have nowhere to go. We are just sitting on the road in the blazing sun right now. All our belongings and other household goods have been thrown out or damaged. We don't know what we will eat today."

The situation is in stark contrast to February when Azharuddin and his mother were feted in Hollywood, attended the Oscars and visited Disneyland.

Yesterday, the family claimed they had not been informed about the planned demolition.

Municipal official Uma Shankar Mistry, who was present during the demolition, told the media the authorities only razed temporary and illegal homes which had recently been erected next to the slum. He said the houses were in an area that was meant for a public garden.

The mother of the child actor said that she did not know what would happen to her family now and that the help promised by local authorities and by the film's makers had not materialised.

Shamim Ismail said: "Our house has been broken down by officials. We have not been given any alternative accommodation. Earlier the authorities had said they would give us a house. But I don't think that will happen any more."

The families of Azharuddin and co-star Rubina Ali, who played a younger version of the film's female lead, had been promised new accommodation by a local housing authority. But a decision about whether or not this will go ahead is still pending. When slum-dwellers are given housing, it is often in poor-quality buildings on the outskirts of cities and far from jobs.

The director of Slumdog Millionaire, Danny Boyle said they debated whether to use real slum children in the film fearing it would distort their lives too much.

Yet Boyle justified the casting saying: "These people have so much prejudice against them, why should we be prejudiced against them as well?"

According to media reports, Azharuddin was paid 1,800 for a month's work, or as the producers said, the equivalent of three months work for an adult.

The producers have also set up a trust, called Jai Ho, after the hit song from the film, to ensure the children get proper homes, a good education and a nest egg when they finish high school.

Producer Christian Colson has described the trust as substantial, but won't tell anyone how much it contains, not even the parents, for fear of making the children vulnerable to exploitation.

The child's father, Ismail Mohammed, has been quoted in the past as saying: "My son has taken on the world and won. Mr Boyle should take care of my son."