Woman rescued from garbage-filled home

When the Mulund police responded to a call of a foul smell emanating from a house in a posh residential complex in Vazer Road area, they expected the worst. But when they broke into the house, they were met with a shocking sight — tonnes of garbage piled up in the four-room house and in the middle of it all, a frail old woman asleep on a bed.

“At around 10 am in the morning, we got a call from a member of the Guide Society that a flat on the ground was smelling foul since many days and when they rang the bell no one answered the door. So we decided to investigate and when we entered the house we found that all the rooms except the hall area had garbage spilling out of it,” said an officer of the Mulund police station. “When we made our way to an inner room, where we saw a really thin old lady sleeping on a bed,” he added.

The woman, identified as Maniben Savla, is 84 years old and is said to be living in the house for the past 13 years. She lives with her four adult children — two women and two men all aged between 30-55 years. Her husband, who was a businessman, died around 10 years ago. “They have an agent running a business with contracts at the Vashi APMC (Agricultural Produce Market Committee) which fetches them good money every month. The children spend this money roaming around and eating out,” said the officer.

The police suspect the children suffer from a mental illness, which has been undiagnosed and also untreated for many years. “The children would roam around the area during the day and only come back at night to give their mother some food. They were all unemployed and would never clean the house,” said the officer. He said the house had not been cleaned in five or six years.

Officials said Maniben has been bedridden for many years. In addition to age-related health issues, she is also paralysed waist down and cannot walk and talk coherently. “She is severely malnourished and has not even had any medicines for her health problems. All these years she has survived on one or two meals a day — this too food prepared in hotels lacking nutrition,” the officer added. Her children would allegedly lock Maniben inside the room, shut the windows too and leave the house.

“There are four rooms in the 2,000-square-foot house and we cleared six dumpers full of garbage from the first two rooms itself. The other rooms are still being cleared. The garbage consisted mainly of food packets, plastic bags, some bottles, newspapers, wrappers etc. It had flies swarming around it and infested with ants and other bugs,” said the officer.

While officials have not registered an offence against anyone yet, they are wondering what needs to be done for the octogenarian. “She is currently being treated at a hospital and we have also warned the children about her plight. But we will be contacting her relatives if any to check whether the woman can be sent to live with them,” the officer said.