Night Shelter Horror: Delhi’s Shameful Secret

Exposing the Night Shelter Nightmare in Delhi

Food, clothing, and shelter are the essentials of a decent life—or so we’re told. The government is bound to provide them, a duty carved into India’s Constitution under Article 21, the right to live with dignity. But in Delhi, that vow is a hollow shell. Night shelters, touted as lifelines for the urban poor under the Deen Dayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Urban Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NULM), have morphed into a grotesque mockery of that ideal. Our investigation peeled back the facade of these so-called sanctuaries across the National Capital Territory, exposing scenes that sear the conscience: filth-strewn floors, broken cots, and skeletal remains of promises unkept—conditions so dire they’d shame any claim of governance.

As we moved from one night shelter in Delhi to the other, the 'so-called' shelter homes laid bare a darker truth: Delhi’s homeless, meant to find safety under the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board’s care, are trapped in a nightmare. From the cramped lanes of Meena Bazaar to the sprawl of Sarai Kale Khan, we saw rats darting over food plates and scampering across torn mats where people sleep. The stench of neglect hung thick, a silent scream from shelters that house hundreds but can’t shield them from misery.

Their washrooms are a disgrace, overflowing with muck and reeking so badly you can’t breathe—problems DUSIB knew for years but did nothing to fix. When winter hits, blankets meant to keep people warm are handed out in tatters, barely covering anyone as the cold bites deep. In one of the night shelters, we found 400 to 500 people fighting over just 20 to 25 plates, a shortage so bad that local volunteers have been sounding the alarm since 2022.

We toured shelter homes across New Delhi—Sarai Kale Khan, Asaf Ali Road, Nizamuddin and the likes—and found neglect in plain sight. At a women’s shelter on Asaf Ali Road, the main door won’t even bolt, leaving the women inside vulnerable. “We’ve told DUSIB about it time and again,” the caretaker said, her tone sharp with dismay, “but nothing’s been done.” There’s no clean water to drink, and the washrooms have no water at all. At a shelter in Old Delhi, the caretaker spoke plainly: “DUSIB hasn’t given us blankets since 2015-2016,” he said, nodding at the worn-out rags they’re left with.

The Probe team visited a night shelter on Asaf Ali Road, where Vicky Sharma, the caretaker, laid bare a broken system. “Every time I call DUSIB to complain, the number’s dead,” he told us, his voice tinged with exasperation. We had him dial the complaint line right there—nothing. He tried again and again; the line stayed silent. When we pressed him on the shelter’s woes, he didn’t hold back: “No geysers, no toilets, no drinking water—we’ve been raising hell about this for two years. The blankets, pillows, mattresses? All rubbish.” Sharma added a personal sting: “I’m not paid on time, and neither are over 100 other caretakers—salary delays are choking us.”

We turned to the residents, who painted a grim picture. Somveer Singh, a four-year veteran of the shelter, spoke bitterly: “The food’s rotten—I get sick eating it, and so do others. They serve us raw slop and rejected lentils. There’s no water. We’re trapped here with nowhere to turn.” A senior citizen, settled in for one and a half years, echoed the despair: “Washrooms are filthy, water’s a constant headache, and the food hurts my stomach every time—plenty of us fall ill. In winter, there’s no hot water. Half get blankets and mattresses; the other half shiver through the cold.”

Women’s Night Shelter in Delhi: Unsafe and Neglected

We went to the women’s night shelter on Asaf Ali Road, where we found a chilling truth: none of the doors could be locked, and some doors are broken entirely. The main gate, the primary entrance to this female shelter home, stands defenseless—neither a bolt nor a facility to lock it, a glaring hazard in a city where crimes against women has been a persistent issue. 

The caretaker told us that despite multiple complaints, nothing has happened. Such is the dismal state of affairs in many of Delhi’s shelter homes. Madhu, the caretaker of this shelter home, spoke with raw dismay: “Very elderly women stay here—we don’t have basic facilities. Water is the most important thing that women need. There is no water in bathrooms. There is no water to even drink. If the women here want to go to the washroom in the night, be it at 1:30 a.m. or 2 a.m., they have to get out of the shelter home and go to a public toilet. This is a safety risk. Even during winters, they did not provide us with blankets or mattresses. The shelter home residents go to a nearby gurudwara or a temple and then they fetch water from there in bottles.”

Like Vicky Sharma, Madhu also states her pay is a mess: “I have not been getting my salary regularly. When we tell our seniors that we are not getting salary, they say, ‘You will get salary once in a while—if you want you work, otherwise you don’t work.’” 

Geeta, one of the residents of this shelter home, is staying there with her three-year-old child and recounted her ordeal: “I have been staying here since a couple of months. I was working in a place and they stopped giving me salary and because of this I was not able to pay the house rent and the owner asked me to vacate and I did not have any other place to go. Therefore I came here and took shelter. There is no door in the bathroom—anyone can see us taking a shower.” 

Another resident of the shelter home, Munni Devi, added her voice: “I have been staying here for almost four years. There is no water to drink or to go to the toilet. I beg outside and then when someone gives me a blanket I use that to sleep. I am staying in this shelter home but for all my needs I have to go out and start begging people.”

Filth, Hunger, and Disease in Delhi’s Shelters

The Probe also visited the Fatehpuri shelter home, and the scenes that greeted us were nothing short of appalling—dogs sprawled lazily across the grimy floors, lying side by side with humans in a haunting display of shared desperation. “The food they give us is stale, unfit even for the dogs lounging here—they turn their noses away, but we humans choke it down out of sheer helplessness,” said Ganesh, a resident with weary eyes. 

“We’ve raised complaints about this rotten food time and again, but the response is always the same—nothing gets done, nothing changes,” he added, his words hanging in the stale air. Another resident stepped forward, revealing a daily ordeal that strips dignity bare: with around 450 people packed into this shelter, there are a pitiful 35 plates to go around. “People stand around waiting—someone eats, then you wash the plate, eat your share, wash it again, and it drags on like this, day after day, an endless cycle of frustration and hunger,” he explained, his tone a mix of anger and resignation.

We confronted the caretaker, Ram Bachan Chaudhary, who is the caretaker of the night shelter, and he painted a picture of a system buckling under pressure. “This place was built to hold about 300 people, but right now, more than 500 souls are crammed in here,” he admitted, his voice steady but strained. “Yes, the plates are far too few, but they keep saying more will come soon. The mattresses and blankets? They’re old, worn thin from overuse—it’s no surprise they’re tearing apart,” he said, gesturing to the tattered heaps scattered around.

Another resident of the shelter home stated: “We’ve handed over written complaints, stacks of them, and every time they nod and say it’ll be sorted. When we push harder, they shrug and point fingers at the government—‘We’ll give you what we get when we get it.’ So what are we supposed to do in the meantime?”

Roshan, another caretaker of the shelter told The Probe: “Take a good look—everyone’s hacking and coughing, drowning in these dirty conditions. They can’t take a shower, they’re eating filthy food, they’re dehydrated with no water to drink. When someone falls sick, all we’ve got is a standard kit—Savlon, cotton, Band-Aids, paracetamol, and some local tablet for stomach trouble. The government doesn’t send us antibiotics, nothing stronger. And when these residents drag themselves to the government’s mohalla clinics, they’re turned away like stray dogs—‘You’re homeless, you’re from the shelter, you’re too dirty to step inside,’ they’re told, shooed off without a second glance. What options do we have left?” 

Inside the Fatehpuri shelter, we were utterly floored by what we saw next—people curled up sleeping beneath the cots, not on them, some with their heads resting on their own slippers, using them as makeshift pillows in a heartbreaking bid for comfort. 

The Probe pressed on to a shelter home in Sarai Kale Khan, where the situation was just as wretched, if not worse. There, we found children sleeping in cramped corners, oblivious as rats darted around them, bold and unhurried. We stood frozen, watching in horror as numerous rats feasted on the food meant for human mouths, tearing into clothes, nibbling at scraps, and leaving a trail of filth and destruction wherever they roamed.

 Broken Promises: Delhi’s Night Shelters in a State of Ruin

Our probe into Delhi’s night shelters began with a promise—a promise carved into the Deen Dayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Urban Livelihoods Mission, a grand plan launched in 2013 by India’s Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs to lift the urban poor from despair. Known in Hindi as the Rashtriya Shahri Aajeevika Mission, it swept aside the old Swarna Jayanti Shahari Rozgar Yojana, vowing to tackle poverty and vulnerability in all cities and towns across the nation. Its targets? The forgotten—street vendors, slum dwellers, homeless souls, ragpickers, the jobless—people clinging to survival in places like Delhi. 

Under its wing sits the Scheme of Shelter for Urban Homeless, a bold pledge to confront the capital’s homelessness crisis head-on. The mission’s goals gleam on paper: permanent shelters, funded fully by the central government, built to house at least 50 people each, open 24/7 through every season, stocked with beds, mattresses, lockers, drinking water, toilets, and decent sanitation. Beyond bricks, it promises healthcare, food tied to the Public Distribution System, education, and social security—identity papers, bank accounts—a ladder to dignity for those who toil in the city’s shadows, informal labourers deserving more than the streets’ brutality.

In Delhi, where rapid growth, endless migration, and stark inequality fuel a swelling homeless tide, the need cuts deeper. Harsh winters that plunge below 5°C and summers that scorch above 40°C turn the pavement into a death trap, a reality the DUSIB, is tasked with fighting under DAY-NULM’s banner. Over 200 shelter homes—called rain baseras—dot the city, clustering in desperate corners like Old Delhi, Yamuna Pushta, and near bustling transport hubs. They’re meant to cradle the most vulnerable: destitute families huddled together, lone men and women with nowhere else to turn, seasonal migrants chasing work. The central government pours in cash for construction, while DUSIB, alongside state officials and NGOs, is supposed to make it work—turn blueprints into sanctuaries. Yet, as our boots hit the ground, that promise crumbled into dust. From Fatehpuri to Asaf Ali Road, from Sarai Kale Khan to Nizamuddin, we’ve seen the truth: these shelters aren’t havens—they’re hollow shells, mocking the mission’s lofty words. 

Hiding the Homeless 

We peeled back a festering wound in Delhi’s underbelly, starting with the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board’s 2014 survey—a tidy little claim that pegged the city’s homeless at just 16,760, a number scratched together with some NGO muscle. But that figure’s been torched by those who’ve walked the streets and counted the shadows—NGOs, experts, anyone with eyes to see—branding it a gross, almost laughable undercount, a flimsy curtain hiding a sprawling crisis. 

Sunil Kumar Aledia, National Convenor of the National Forum for Homeless Housing Rights and Executive Director of the Centre for Holistic Development told The Probe: “In 2014, DUSIB rolled out this survey, swearing there were only about 16,000 homeless in Delhi. But let’s drag this into the light—way back in 1976, government reports clocked 19,000 homeless when Delhi’s population sat at roughly 40 lakhs. That was then. By the 2011 census, the city had swelled to 1 crore 68 lakhs, a massive leap, yet DUSIB strolls out in 2014 with this puny 16,000 numbers? How does that hold water? When the population was a fraction of what it is now, we had more homeless counted, and now, with millions more packed in, they’re telling us the number’s shrunk? It’s a sham—the government’s deliberately burying the real tally, shoving the homeless out of sight, out of mind.” 

The numbers have been a battlefield for years, with surveys crashing against each other like waves on a jagged shore. Rewind to August 27 through August 31, 2024—Shahri Adhikar Manch: Begharon Ke Saath, a fierce coalition of groups battling for the homeless, hit the pavement for a headcount that shook the city. They found 1,54,369 homeless persons scattered across Delhi’s streets, a staggering figure that dwarfed DUSIB’s old line. But they didn’t stop there—they threw out a bolder warning: the real count could climb to 300,000, a full 3 lakh, once you reckon with the rain-drenched alleys they couldn’t scour, the locked-off zones they couldn’t breach, and the limits of a five-night sweep. 

Meanwhile, the government digs in its heels, dodging a full census with a stubbornness that’s left the homeless as ghosts in their own city. A November 2024 Delhi High Court order demanded a fresh count after years of this farce, but as of March 2025, DUSIB’s still stalling, leaving us clueless about how many truly roam the capital’s edges.

This isn’t just numbers—it’s a cover-up cloaked in apathy, and Aledia’s had enough: “Don’t frame this as a summer or winter headache—the shelter home crisis bleeds through every season, an all-weather failure. We can’t even say how many need help because the government won’t look.” His point slices deep—while DUSIB brags about 197 shelters, their own logs from January 2025 show they house under 7,000 on a good night, a drop in the bucket against SAMBKS’s 1,54,369. The gap’s a chasm, widened by years of ducked responsibility. We’re stranded in a disgraceful fog, groping for the scale of Delhi’s homeless horde, their lives erased by a system that prefers to look the other way rather than lift a finger.

We reached out to DUSIB for their side of this bleak saga, and we’ll bring you their version the moment they break their silence. Delhi’s homeless aren’t numbers on a page; they’re flesh and blood, shivering under cots, begging for blankets, choking on stale scraps while rats feast beside them. They’re women with no locks on their doors, children dodging vermin, caretakers left unpaid and unheard. The Deen Dayal mission promised dignity, but these shelters deliver disgrace—a betrayal etched in every broken bed, every dry tap, every cough echoing through the filth. As the capital glitters for some, it crushes others beneath its weight, and the government’s refusal to count them doesn’t erase them—it damns us all.

(With additional inputs from Suhani Prakash)