Bulldozing the past The Mumbai slum dwellers who fear extinction in a city of luxury high-rises

For months, the threatening phone calls kept coming. First, allegedly from an ex-police officer and a retired army general, and then from the police themselves.

- Hannah Ellis-Petersen Aakash Hassan Mumbai

Finally, Mohammad Khurshid Shaikh claims, he was summoned to the police station and told clearly: keep quiet or there will be real trouble for you.

Shaikh is among those fighting a multimillion-dollar project in which Dharavi - one of India's largest and most storied slums - will be bulldozed and redeveloped by the multinational conglomerate Adani Group.

"The culture and ecosystem of Dharavi is like nowhere else in the world," says Shaikh. "But they want to destroy our community and stop us speaking out."

The dank gullies of Dharavi sit in stark contrast to the soaring skyscrapers and Bollywood penthouses that loom over the settlement. Homes are built haphazardly and often without proper sanitation, unregulated industries emit toxic smoke and the air is filled with the suffocating smell of open sewers.

To some, the promise of Dharavi transformed into a glistening neighbourhood of luxury high-rises, neat parks, shiny shopping centres and homes with two toilets is an aspirational dream come true.

"We don't have proper healthcare, roads or drainage and there's nowhere for children to play," says A Selvin Nadar, 56, a chai seller who migrated from Tamil Nadu in 1982. "The only way is to tear it all down and build us new homes."

But others, such as Shaikh, are resisting.

None deny that Dharavi, long neglected as an illegal encroachment, is in stark need of investment and development. Yet they fear that this plan - absent of public consultation - is one that will turn a piece of prime Mumbai real estate into a playground for the rich, forcing out the lower-caste, migrant communities who have been there since the late 1800s.