Hero to homeless: House of Muslim man behind India tunnel rescue demolished

Rat-miner Wakeel Hasan was a national hero in December, after helping rescue 41 men trapped in a Himalayan tunnel. Now, he’s on the streets, after authorities bulldozed his house.

New Delhi, India – Wakeel Hasan had to climb his neighbour’s 1.8-metre (six-foot) wall to enter the rubble-filled plot of land where his house stood only a day earlier.

The police had barricaded the front of the land where his home, a single-floored, two-bedroom house that his family had called home for over a decade, was demolished on Wednesday by the authorities in Khajuri Khas, a densely populated neighbourhood in India’s capital, New Delhi.

A day later, he stood on the rubble of his house, tears rolling down his face as he overturned bricks and wood planks to try and recover his 15-year-old daughter Aliza’s textbooks, who had to miss her 10th standard annual examination on Thursday.

“I can’t even look at this demolished home and not cry,” Hasan told Al Jazeera.

Only three months ago, Hasan was a national hero and had made headlines for rescuing 41 construction workers trapped in a Himalayan tunnel for more than two weeks.

His team of so-called “rat-hole miners” was called to the northern Uttarakhand state after professional rescuers armed with tunnel drilling machines repeatedly failed to reach the trapped workers. A nation of 1.5 billion people held its collective breath as the rat-hole miners dug by hand for 26 hours to free the buried men.

Hasan and his team received national recognition for their feat, including praise from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a selfie with Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan. Cash awards were announced and TV channels interviewed Hasan and his team of rat miners for days.

Only three months later, Hasan’s