Kogilu After the Bulldozers: 400 Homes Gone in Winter

On the morning of December 20, 2025, bulldozers rolled into Waseem Colony and Fakir Colony in Kogilu Layout, north Bengaluru, flattening homes in their path. By dawn, more than 400 families had lost their homes. Residents say they were not given prior notice.

The settlements in Kogilu, located at the foothills of a stone quarry, had existed for over 25 years. The land has been identified by authorities for a waste processing plant. I visited the site in Kogilu on December 31, eleven days after the bulldozers tore through the neighbourhood. I did not go there as part of a breaking news cycle. By then, the headlines had moved on, and the images of bulldozers had faded from television screens. I went because I could not ignore the disquiet that followed reports of families being evicted in winter, just days before Christmas and New Year. I wanted to see what remained after the machines had left. What I found was not chaos. It was the aftermath.

The debris had settled into uneven mounds of brick, tin sheets and splintered wood. People walked carefully across what had once been narrow internal lanes.

Many were holding documents. Aadhaar cards bearing addresses that no longer existed. Electricity bills retrieved from rubble. Plastic folders containing photocopies of land-related papers. Some residents showed me printouts of Google Earth images with the location of their former homes circled in pen. Homes had disappeared. The paperwork had not.

Karnataka state government officials were present, seated at temporary desks. They were documenting names and details, listening to residents, and assuring them that their cases would be reviewed. People queued quietly, submitting whatever proof of residence they had managed to salvage.

The contrast was difficult to ignore. Not far from the demolished colonies, high-rise apartment complexes were drilling deeper into rock, preparing foundations. Here, one settlement had been flattened in the name of development. There, another was rising.

Public discourse around demolitions often uses administrative language: “clearance,” “encroachment,” “relocation.” Standing amid the rubble, those terms felt insufficient.

For many families in Kogilu, displacement was not only the loss of shelter after the bulldozers moved in. It was the loss of address, neighbourhood networks, school proximity, workplace access, and a sense of civic anchoring. When a government-issued identity card still allows you to vote from an address that bulldozers have reduced to rubble, the meaning of belonging becomes complicated.

Some residents in Kogilu Layout accompanied me for a while, pointing out where homes once stood. Others offered water. One person brought an umbrella to shield me from the sun while I adjusted my camera. When I showed some people the first infrared image-dominated by deep reds and pale tones-some asked, “Why is it all red?” I told them briefly that infrared images can be more impactful. One man responded, “Yes. We need impact.”

Does repeated exposure to images rendered in ‘normal’ light normalise eviction, helplessness, homelessness and suffering? Does the realistic legitimacy of what is visually documented make what is seen credible but not necessarily felt, at times? Has the visible light we revel in, with our ability to distinguish as many as ten million colours, induced more blindness within us? This is where I find the relevance of infrared photography that I hope will disrupt this visual complacency.

Eviction does not end in the moment bulldozers withdraw. It continues-in paperwork disputes, temporary shelter, uncertainty about schooling, and the search for stability. Conventional photojournalism often seeks what is called a “decisive moment.” But displacement is not decisive. It is ongoing.

It is easy to treat demolitions as isolated administrative events. A date. A number of houses. A statement from authorities. Then the cycle moves on. But bearing witness requires remaining with the site long enough to recognise that what happened is not self-contained. It enters the future of those affected.

Several residents told me they had lived in the colonies for more than two decades. Children had grown up there. Weddings had been held. Votes had been cast. The place existed not only as an address but as a social ecosystem. When that ecosystem is erased, the loss extends beyond physical structures.

In Kogilu Layout, where bulldozers ruptured lives overnight, families are still struggling to rebuild. The colour once held within their homes now survives mostly in memory; what remains on the ground is broken rubble, rendered in infrared tones that heighten the starkness of their loss.

My last memory of Kogilu Layout that day was her smile. Days after bulldozers tore through the settlement, that smile endured-a quiet assertion of dignity and warmth in the face of loss.