Rajini Bari, whose family owned the land on which the godowns were charred, was at the scene, seeing all their materials worth over Rs 60 lakh burn down. “We live in Bandra. The moment we heard about the fire, we rushed here hoping the damage was not too extreme, but now we realise that we have nothing left,” she said.

According to the locals, at 11.15 am on Saturday, a fire broke out at the Navrang Compound near Mahim Fatak, close to the Sion-Mahim Link Road in Dharavi, triggering a multi-agency emergency response and disrupting suburban train services. The Mumbai Fire Brigade (MFB) received the first alert at 12.29 pm. The fire, which locals think started out as a short circuit, spread onto the nearby shanties, leading to three or four cylinders exploding which were inside the shanties.