IPH director S.C. Ranga, however, maintains that the IPH had nothing to do with it.

According to Verma, Bala had been sending letters to the Ministry of Social Welfare asking for an alternative plot for her booth, citing frequent harassment by MCD officials. Besides, she felt insecure sitting on the pavement with people peering inside, Verma says.

``The MCD informed us verbally that we must remove our things from the booth by Saturday, when it would be demolished,'' she says. ``Today, they came at 2 p.m. when Rajni was not there and just pulled down the booth.''

S.C. Ranga was not aware of the incident when approached by Express Newsline. He maintained that Bala's relatives had set up the booth and the IPH had nothing to do with it.

He also said that he was new to the post and did not know if the booth was ever inside the IPH premises. ``We never sanctioned any booth to anyone. We train and guide people, but we are not a sanctioning authority,'' he said.

He said that Bala, who is a paraplegic, could have easily spent more time in the booth than she did. ``It was run by her relatives rather than by her,'' he says. ``Had she been there, no one would have pulled down the booth,'' he maintains. While Rajni's relatives say that the IPH has cheated them of the booth by throwing them out of the premises in 1995 without allotting an alternative place, Ranga disagrees.

``The MCD is free to remove structures that hinder traffic. But it can always shift the PCO to an alternative place,'' he says.

According to MCD Assistant Commissioner (City) S.K. Jha: ``The booth was probably removed as part of the drive to remove encroachments being carried out in the city.'' He says that the booth would not have been removed if Bala had possessed a `tahbedari', a document that allows encroachers to own 6 ft by 4 ft of land. ``She probably did not produce the `tahbedari', or the booth would not have been removed,'' he says.