Safdar Ali is 78 years old. His house, built in the 1970s, did not belong to him but to his sons, Syed Qamar Abbas and Syed Faraz Abbas. They had purchased it in 2002 after selling a piece of family land. For over two decades, they never received a single notice from the Prayagraj Development Authority (PDA) about any illegal construction. But on the morning of 2 March 2023, Safdar’s neighbours saw two or three men pasting something on the wall outside the house, click a picture of it, peel it off, and leave. They did not speak to anyone in Safdar’s household about it. No one in his family had time to check what it was. Hours later, their home was gone. Ali was at his shop in Prayagraj (formerly Allahabad), when he received a call from home. The PDA had arrived, accompanied by a heavy police presence, to…

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