Latest news with #Chittagong
Yahoo
a day ago
- General
- Yahoo
New rules may not change dirty and deadly ship recycling business
Mizan Hossain fell 10 metres (33-foot) from the top of a ship he was cutting up on Chittagong beach in Bangladesh -- where the majority of the world's maritime giants meet their end -- when the vibrations shook him from the upper deck. He survived, but his back was crushed. "I can't get up in the morning," said the 31-year-old who has a wife, three children and his parents to support. "We eat one meal in two, and I see no way out of my situation," said Hossain, his hands swollen below a deep scar on his right arm. The shipbreaking site where Hossain worked without a harness did not comply with international safety and environmental standards. Hossain has been cutting up ships on the sand without proper protection or insurance since he was a child, like many men in his village a few kilometres inland from the giant beached ships. One of his neighbours had his toes crushed in another yard shortly before AFP visited Chittagong in February. Shipbreaking yards employ 20,000 to 30,000 people directly or indirectly in the sprawling port on the Bay of Bengal. But the human and environmental cost of the industry is also immense, experts say. The Hong Kong Convention on the Recycling of Ships, which is meant to regulate one of the world's most dangerous industries, is set to come into effect on June 26. But many question whether its rules on handling toxic waste and protecting workers are sufficient or if they will ever be properly implemented. Only seven out of Chittagong's 30 yards meet the new rules about equipping workers with helmets, harnesses and other protection as well as protocols for decontaminating ships of asbestos and other pollutants and storing hazardous waste. - No official death tolls - Chittagong was the final destination of nearly a third of the 409 ships dismantled globally last year, according to the NGO coalition Shipbreaking Platform. Most of the others ended up in India, Pakistan, or Turkey. But Bangladesh -- close to the Asian nerve centre of global maritime commerce -- offers the best price for buying end-of-life ships due to its extremely low labour costs, with a minimum monthly wage of around $133 (115 euros). Chittagong's 25-kilometre stretch of beach is the world's biggest ship graveyard. Giant hulks of oil tankers or gas carriers lie in the mud under the scorching sun, an army of workers slowly dismembering them with oxyacetylene torches. "When I started (in the 2000s) it was extremely dangerous," said Mohammad Ali, a thickset union leader who long worked without protection dismantling ships on the sand. "Accidents were frequent, and there were regular deaths and injuries." He was left incapacitated for months after being hit on the head by a piece of metal. "When there's an accident, you're either dead or disabled," the 48-year-old said. At least 470 workers have been killed and 512 seriously injured in the shipbreaking yards of Bangladesh, India and Pakistan since 2009, according to the Shipbreaking Platform NGO. No official death toll is kept in Chittagong. But between 10 and 22 workers a year died in its yards between 2018 and 2022, according to a count kept by Mohamed Ali Sahin, founder of a workers' support centre. There have been improvements in recent years, he said, especially after Dhaka ratified the Hong Kong Convention in 2023, Sahin said. But seven workers still died last year and major progress is needed, he said. The industry is further accused of causing major environmental damage, particularly to mangroves, with oil and heavy metals escaping into the sea from the beach. Asbestos -- which is not illegal in Bangladesh -- is also dumped in open-air landfills. Shipbreaking is also to blame for abnormally high levels of arsenic and other metalloids in the region's soil, rice and vegetables, according to a 2024 study in the Journal of Hazardous Materials. - 'Responsibility should be shared' - PHP, the most modern yard in the region, is one of few in Chittagong that meets the new standards. Criticism of pollution and working conditions in Bangladesh yards annoys its managing director Mohammed Zahirul Islam. "Just because we're South Asian, with dark skin, are we not capable of excelling in a field?" he told AFP. "Ships are built in developed countries... then used by Europeans and Westerners for 20 or 30 years, and we get them (at the end) for four months. "But everything is our fault," he said as workers in helmets, their faces shielded by plastic visors to protect them from metal shards, dismantled a Japanese gas carrier on a concrete platform near the shore. "There should be a shared responsibility for everyone involved in this whole cycle," he added. His yard has modern cranes and even flower beds, but workers are not masked as they are in Europe to protect them from inhaling metal dust and fumes. But modernising yards to meet the new standards is costly, with PHP spending $10 million to up its game. With the sector in crisis, with half as many ships sent for scrap since the pandemic -- and Bangladesh hit by instability after the tumultuous ousting of premier Sheikh Hasina in August -- investors are reluctant, said John Alonso of the International Maritime Organization (IMO). Chittagong still has no facility to treat or store hazardous materials taken from ships. PHP encases the asbestos it extracts in cement and stores it on-site in a dedicated room. "I think we have about six to seven years of storage capacity," said its expert Liton Mamudzer. But NGOs like Shipbreaking Platform and Robin des Bois are sceptical about how feasible this is, with some ships containing scores of tonnes of asbestos. And Walton Pantland, of the global union federation IndustriALL, questioned whether the Hong Kong standards will be maintained once yards get their certification, with inspections left to local officials. Indeed six workers were killed in September in an explosion at SN Corporation's Chittagong yard, which was compliant with the convention. Shipbreaking Platform said it was symptomatic of a lack of adequate "regulation, supervision and worker protections" in Bangladesh, even with the Hong Kong rules. - 'Toxic' Trojan horse - The NGO's director Ingvild Jenssen said shipowners were using the Hong Kong Convention to bypass the Basel Convention, which bans OECD countries from exporting toxic waste to developing nations. She accused them of using it to offload toxic ships cheaply at South Asian yards without fear of prosecution, using a flag of convenience or intermediaries. In contrast, European shipowners are required to dismantle ships based on the continent, or flying a European flag, under the much stricter Ship Recycling Regulation (SRR). At the Belgian shipbreaking yard Galloo near the Ghent-Terneuzen canal, demolition chief Peter Wyntin told AFP how ships are broken down into "50 different kinds of materials" to be recycled. Everything is mechanised, with only five or six workers wearing helmets, visors and masks to filter the air, doing the actual breaking amid mountains of scrap metal. A wind turbine supplies electricity, and a net collects anything that falls in the canal. Galloo also sank 10 million euros into water treatment, using activated carbon and bacterial filters. But Wyntin said it is a struggle to survive with several European yards forced to shut as Turkish ones with EU certification take much of the business. While shipbreakers in the EU have "25,000 pages of legislation to comply with", he argued, those in Aliaga on the western coast of Turkey have only 25 pages of rules to respect to be "third-country compliant under SRR". Wyntin is deeply worried the Hong Kong Convention will further undermine standards and European yards with them. "You can certify yards in Turkey or Asia, but it still involves beaching," where ships are dismantled directly on the shore. "And beaching is a process we would never accept in Europe," he insisted. - Illegal dumps - Turkish health and safety officials reported eight deaths since 2020 at shipbreaking yards in Aliaga, near Izmir, which specialises in dismantling cruise ships. "If we have a fatality, work inspectors arrive immediately and we risk being shut down," Wyntin told AFP. In April, Galloo lost a bid to recycle a 13,000-tonne Italian ferry, with 400 tonnes of asbestos, to a Turkish yard, Wyntin said. Yet in May, the local council in Aliaga said "hazardous waste was stored in an environmentally harmful manner, sometimes just covered with soil." "It's estimated that 15,000 tons of hazardous waste are scattered in the region, endangering human and environmental health due to illegal storage methods," it said on X, posting photos of illegal dumps. In Bangladesh, Human Rights Watch and the Shipbreaking Platform have reported that "toxic materials from ships, including asbestos" are sometimes "resold on the second-hand market". In Chittagong everything gets recycled. On the road along the beach, shops overflow with furniture, toilets, generators and staircases taken straight from the hulks pulled up on the beach a few metres away. Not far away, Rekha Akter mourned her husband, one of those who died in the explosion at SN Corporation's yard in September. A safety supervisor, his lungs were burned in the blast. Without his salary, she fears that she and their two young children are "condemned to live in poverty. It's our fate," said the young widow. agu/dp/fg/rl
News.com.au
a day ago
- General
- News.com.au
New rules may not change dirty and deadly ship recycling business
Mizan Hossain fell 10 metres (33-foot) from the top of a ship he was cutting up on Chittagong beach in Bangladesh -- where the majority of the world's maritime giants meet their end -- when the vibrations shook him from the upper deck. He survived, but his back was crushed. "I can't get up in the morning," said the 31-year-old who has a wife, three children and his parents to support. "We eat one meal in two, and I see no way out of my situation," said Hossain, his hands swollen below a deep scar on his right arm. The shipbreaking site where Hossain worked without a harness did not comply with international safety and environmental standards. Hossain has been cutting up ships on the sand without proper protection or insurance since he was a child, like many men in his village a few kilometres inland from the giant beached ships. One of his neighbours had his toes crushed in another yard shortly before AFP visited Chittagong in February. Shipbreaking yards employ 20,000 to 30,000 people directly or indirectly in the sprawling port on the Bay of Bengal. But the human and environmental cost of the industry is also immense, experts say. The Hong Kong Convention on the Recycling of Ships, which is meant to regulate one of the world's most dangerous industries, is set to come into effect on June 26. But many question whether its rules on handling toxic waste and protecting workers are sufficient or if they will ever be properly implemented. Only seven out of Chittagong's 30 yards meet the new rules about equipping workers with helmets, harnesses and other protection as well as protocols for decontaminating ships of asbestos and other pollutants and storing hazardous waste. - No official death tolls - Chittagong was the final destination of nearly a third of the 409 ships dismantled globally last year, according to the NGO coalition Shipbreaking Platform. Most of the others ended up in India, Pakistan, or Turkey. But Bangladesh -- close to the Asian nerve centre of global maritime commerce -- offers the best price for buying end-of-life ships due to its extremely low labour costs, with a minimum monthly wage of around $133 (115 euros). Chittagong's 25-kilometre stretch of beach is the world's biggest ship graveyard. Giant hulks of oil tankers or gas carriers lie in the mud under the scorching sun, an army of workers slowly dismembering them with oxyacetylene torches. "When I started (in the 2000s) it was extremely dangerous," said Mohammad Ali, a thickset union leader who long worked without protection dismantling ships on the sand. "Accidents were frequent, and there were regular deaths and injuries." He was left incapacitated for months after being hit on the head by a piece of metal. "When there's an accident, you're either dead or disabled," the 48-year-old said. At least 470 workers have been killed and 512 seriously injured in the shipbreaking yards of Bangladesh, India and Pakistan since 2009, according to the Shipbreaking Platform NGO. No official death toll is kept in Chittagong. But between 10 and 22 workers a year died in its yards between 2018 and 2022, according to a count kept by Mohamed Ali Sahin, founder of a workers' support centre. There have been improvements in recent years, he said, especially after Dhaka ratified the Hong Kong Convention in 2023, Sahin said. But seven workers still died last year and major progress is needed, he said. The industry is further accused of causing major environmental damage, particularly to mangroves, with oil and heavy metals escaping into the sea from the beach. Asbestos -- which is not illegal in Bangladesh -- is also dumped in open-air landfills. Shipbreaking is also to blame for abnormally high levels of arsenic and other metalloids in the region's soil, rice and vegetables, according to a 2024 study in the Journal of Hazardous Materials. - 'Responsibility should be shared' - PHP, the most modern yard in the region, is one of few in Chittagong that meets the new standards. Criticism of pollution and working conditions in Bangladesh yards annoys its managing director Mohammed Zahirul Islam. "Just because we're South Asian, with dark skin, are we not capable of excelling in a field?" he told AFP. "Ships are built in developed countries... then used by Europeans and Westerners for 20 or 30 years, and we get them (at the end) for four months. "But everything is our fault," he said as workers in helmets, their faces shielded by plastic visors to protect them from metal shards, dismantled a Japanese gas carrier on a concrete platform near the shore. "There should be a shared responsibility for everyone involved in this whole cycle," he added. His yard has modern cranes and even flower beds, but workers are not masked as they are in Europe to protect them from inhaling metal dust and fumes. But modernising yards to meet the new standards is costly, with PHP spending $10 million to up its game. With the sector in crisis, with half as many ships sent for scrap since the pandemic -- and Bangladesh hit by instability after the tumultuous ousting of premier Sheikh Hasina in August -- investors are reluctant, said John Alonso of the International Maritime Organization (IMO). Chittagong still has no facility to treat or store hazardous materials taken from ships. PHP encases the asbestos it extracts in cement and stores it on-site in a dedicated room. "I think we have about six to seven years of storage capacity," said its expert Liton Mamudzer. But NGOs like Shipbreaking Platform and Robin des Bois are sceptical about how feasible this is, with some ships containing scores of tonnes of asbestos. And Walton Pantland, of the global union federation IndustriALL, questioned whether the Hong Kong standards will be maintained once yards get their certification, with inspections left to local officials. Indeed six workers were killed in September in an explosion at SN Corporation's Chittagong yard, which was compliant with the convention. Shipbreaking Platform said it was symptomatic of a lack of adequate "regulation, supervision and worker protections" in Bangladesh, even with the Hong Kong rules. - 'Toxic' Trojan horse - The NGO's director Ingvild Jenssen said shipowners were using the Hong Kong Convention to bypass the Basel Convention, which bans OECD countries from exporting toxic waste to developing nations. She accused them of using it to offload toxic ships cheaply at South Asian yards without fear of prosecution, using a flag of convenience or intermediaries. In contrast, European shipowners are required to dismantle ships based on the continent, or flying a European flag, under the much stricter Ship Recycling Regulation (SRR). At the Belgian shipbreaking yard Galloo near the Ghent-Terneuzen canal, demolition chief Peter Wyntin told AFP how ships are broken down into "50 different kinds of materials" to be recycled. Everything is mechanised, with only five or six workers wearing helmets, visors and masks to filter the air, doing the actual breaking amid mountains of scrap metal. A wind turbine supplies electricity, and a net collects anything that falls in the canal. Galloo also sank 10 million euros into water treatment, using activated carbon and bacterial filters. But Wyntin said it is a struggle to survive with several European yards forced to shut as Turkish ones with EU certification take much of the business. While shipbreakers in the EU have "25,000 pages of legislation to comply with", he argued, those in Aliaga on the western coast of Turkey have only 25 pages of rules to respect to be "third-country compliant under SRR". Wyntin is deeply worried the Hong Kong Convention will further undermine standards and European yards with them. "You can certify yards in Turkey or Asia, but it still involves beaching," where ships are dismantled directly on the shore. "And beaching is a process we would never accept in Europe," he insisted. - Illegal dumps - Turkish health and safety officials reported eight deaths since 2020 at shipbreaking yards in Aliaga, near Izmir, which specialises in dismantling cruise ships. "If we have a fatality, work inspectors arrive immediately and we risk being shut down," Wyntin told AFP. In April, Galloo lost a bid to recycle a 13,000-tonne Italian ferry, with 400 tonnes of asbestos, to a Turkish yard, Wyntin said. Yet in May, the local council in Aliaga said "hazardous waste was stored in an environmentally harmful manner, sometimes just covered with soil." "It's estimated that 15,000 tons of hazardous waste are scattered in the region, endangering human and environmental health due to illegal storage methods," it said on X, posting photos of illegal dumps. In Bangladesh, Human Rights Watch and the Shipbreaking Platform have reported that "toxic materials from ships, including asbestos" are sometimes "resold on the second-hand market". In Chittagong everything gets recycled. On the road along the beach, shops overflow with furniture, toilets, generators and staircases taken straight from the hulks pulled up on the beach a few metres away. Not far away, Rekha Akter mourned her husband, one of those who died in the explosion at SN Corporation's yard in September. A safety supervisor, his lungs were burned in the blast. Without his salary, she fears that she and their two young children are "condemned to live in poverty. It's our fate," said the young widow. agu/dp/fg/rl
SBS Australia
4 days ago
- Business
- SBS Australia
An illegal fate? The curious case of Australia's last homemade cargo ship
An Australian cargo ship scrapped for steel in Bangladesh may have intentionally evaded an international hazardous waste treaty and European law, a Dateline investigation can reveal. A Panama flag, a Liberian shell company, and the world's largest "cash buyer" were all part of the mysterious trail of the ship's final voyage. According to the industry watchdog, NGO Shipbreaking Platform (NSP), which campaigns to clean up the industry, the Searoad Tamar case is not isolated, but rather business as usual for the international maritime industry. This is how nearly all the world's ocean-going vessels are scrapped, its website says . Most of the world's ships die on just two beaches: one each in India and Bangladesh. There, beached ships often containing hazardous waste are cut apart by poor workers, usually without protective equipment, in what the International Labour Organisation declared one of the world's most dangerous jobs. The Searoad Tamar was a roll-on, roll-off vehicle ferry that for years plied the Bass Straight between Devonport and Melbourne. Its longtime owner-operator, SeaRoad, sold the ship in 2021 to a Greece-based shipping company for use in the Mediterranean, a company spokesperson said in a statement. The Searoad Tamar left Melbourne for the last time in April 2021 but never arrived in Greece. Instead, three weeks later, and registered under a Panama flag, the ship was beached into the mud at Chittagong, Bangladesh's second largest city. Dateline does not suggest that the Tasmanian company, SeaRoad, did anything wrong. SeaRoad's head, Chas Kelly, said he was "devastated" to learn the ship had been scrapped. Shipping records obscure the name of the new Greek owner, but Dateline has confirmed with three sources that the Athens-addressed Ainaftis Shipping Co. purchased the Searoad Tamar. Ainaftis Shipping Co. did not reply to Dateline's emailed questions. It would likely breach both EU laws and the Basel Convention on the movement of hazardous waste if the Greek company sold and sent the Searoad Tamar to a Bangladeshi scrapyard. But official shipping records show that the vessel was broken at the Chittagong scrapyard, Asadi Steel Enterprise. So, was a so-called cash buyer — a middleman ship scrapping merchant company involved? Dateline approached the Asadi Steel Enterprise yard and was told by the general manager that it bought the Searoad Tamar from a company with an address in Liberia: Ship Recycling Investments LLC. But NSP analysts think it's a shell company. Its address is a PO Box for Liberia's official offshore business registry, reportedly linked to tens of thousands of anonymous companies. But the address also links it to a well-known cash buyer: Global Marketing Systems (GMS). The Dubai-based company's website says GMS is "world's largest buyer of ships and offshore vessels for recycling". The site even lists a calendar of Bangladesh's tides for beaching purposes. GMS also did not respond to Dateline's questions. NSP's website says that cash buyers and so-called ' flags of convenience ' are used to allow shipping companies to send ships for scrapping in places like Bangladesh and India while avoiding locals laws and the Basel Convention's restrictions. This, NSP's analysts' say, is how most of the world's ships end up broken on beaches in Bangladesh and India, despite global attempts to control and prevent the practice. And it's why the arrangements and trail of the Searoad Tamar from Melbourne to Chittagong are so difficult to investigate, because the cash buyer system inhibits scrutiny and obscures accountability.
SBS Australia
07-06-2025
- Business
- SBS Australia
Ships of death: This notorious industry is about to change, but is it greenwashing?
Bangadesh's ship-breaking industry is notoriously hazardous and dangerous. A new international treaty that comes into force in June aims to clean it up. But critics say it's flawed and doesn't address the key issues. Source: SBS / Louis Dai Watch Dateline's latest episode about Bangladesh's ship-breaking industry on 10 June at 9.30pm AEST on SBS or SBS On Demand. Ship cutter Delwar Hossain's job might be killing him but he's worried he'll lose it. If his scrapyard doesn't turn "green" by the end of June, he won't have ships to cut, or money to feed his wife and two young children. And the notoriously polluted Bangladeshi beach where he works will soon lose most of its end-of-life cargo ships being cut apart in the mud. Over 90 per cent of Chittagong's beach scrapyards will be rendered idle when an international treaty comes into legal force on 26 June. After this date, Bangladesh's government won't allow end-of-life ships to be imported by scrapyards that are not compliant with the Hong Kong International Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships. They will have to obtain a "green" certificate or face closure. The president of the Bangladesh Ship Breakers and Recyclers Association (BSBRA), Mohammed Zahirul Islam, estimates 80 per cent of the workforce will lose their jobs as a result. "We have more than 50,000 people working directly in this industry, and so after June this year, maybe 10,00 will be employed and the other 40,000 workers will be out of work,' he says. He says only seven out of their 114 member scrapyards are currently compliant. He expects that number to rise to 20 yards by the end of the year, but other industry watchers say the figure will be more like 10. And the industry's critics would like the number to be zero. Chittagong, also known as Chattogram, is Bangladesh's second largest city and the world's leading ship breaker by steel tonnage. Last year, almost 40 per cent of the world's scrapped vessels met their end on the city's muddy beachline, according to BSBRA figures. It's also a notoriously polluting and dangerous industry. Workers like Delwar cut gigantic cargo ships apart with handheld oxytorches so metal and parts can be scrapped, reused or recycled. Apart from the risk of injury and death from falls or falling steel, workers are exposed to toxic dust, smoke and chemicals, often working barefoot and without protective masks. In the last five years of records, there were at least 38 deaths and 177 injuries in Bangladeshi shipbreaking yards, according to IndustriALL Union Group, an international trade union. Delwar has previously injured his back, and his cough suggests that more damage is taking a toll. "When we're cutting, smoke fills the air and over time it causes respiratory issues and infections," he says. For this gruelling work, he makes 600 taka ($7.70) per shift — not enough, he says, and less than other jobs. "Honestly, I don't enjoy it. But I need to take care of my family so I don't have a choice." Numerous critics say there is no safe or clean way to break ships on a beach in Bangladesh, nor would such a practice be allowed in a developed country. They also say the Hong Kong convention is flawed and doesn't address key issues that have long plagued the industry: labour rights, pollution, and the skirting of an existing treaty that prevents wealthy countries and companies from sending hazardous ships to Bangladesh. The NGO Shipbreaking Platform (NSP), a global coalition of organisations fighting harmful shipbreaking practices, said in a 2023 statement that the Hong Kong convention would "only serve the interests of shipping companies" and lacks the same level of regulation of the Basel Convention, an international treaty that bans toxic waste disposal in developing countries. When an old ship is ready for scrapping, it is automatically classed as hazardous waste under the Basel Convention. The NSP says shipping companies often circumvent the restrictions of the Basel Convention by obscuring the country of the ship's origin through intermediary 'cash buyers' and 'flags of convenience'. It says a cash buyer is a middleman company that buys a ship and then registers it with a PO Box shell company in a tax haven. Additionally, the law of the sea places a ship's responsibility with the ship's flag state, so cash buyers use flags from countries with lax maritime law enforcement standards. In this way, a shipping company from a country such as Australia, Greece or China can sell a ship to a cash buyer who, in turn, sells the ship for scrapping in Bangladesh. The beach breaking yards in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan are popular destinations because they're known to pay about five times more money for ships than highly regulated European yards. Bareesh Chowdhury, policy and campaigns coordinator at the Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association (BELA), a member of the NGO coalition, says, '[The Hong Kong Convention] doesn't address the problem of flags of convenience or the cash buyers. "These gaps are what's going to make this treaty ineffective as a result." He says the Basel Convention, to which Australia is a signatory, encourages industrialised countries to manage their own hazardous waste, whereas he says the Hong Kong Convention places the responsibility for toxic waste on the vessel's flag state and the recycling state, not its country of origin. "Instead of urging developed countries or urging ship owning countries to take responsibility for the waste that they are generating, it has passed that responsibility onto the importing state and the final disposal state, which are often countries that do not have the means for that kind of disposal," he says. Chowdhury says ocean-going vessels are riddled with toxins such as asbestos, heavy metals, oils, and carcinogens. And it's not just the scrapyard workers lacking proper safety equipment who are at risk of exposure. Contaminated spills pollute ocean waters and soil, and items made of toxic materials find their way into ordinary homes, posing serious health risks to local communities. "Bangladesh struggles with municipal waste management, let alone toxic waste that requires specialised facilities and care," he said. Bangladesh has a population of 140 million people and the largest ship-breaking industry in the world, but is without a single hazardous waste disposal facility. Zahirul says Bangladesh is trying to set up an appropriate hazardous waste facility with help from overseas aid but it's a few years off. The PHP ship-breaking yard Zahirul manages is part of one of the country's largest conglomerates and claims to be the first green ship recycling facility in Bangladesh to be compliant with the Hong Kong Convention. He says they've implemented changes to minimise the impact on the environment and workers, including concrete flooring, cranes, personal safety equipment and waste containment. He concedes that asbestos waste from ships can't be disposed of in the country, so it's entombed in concrete and kept on site. He bristles against the idea that ships cannot be safely scrapped on a beach. But he agrees that the onus on cleaning up the industry should not just be shouldered by Bangladesh. "A ship is built in the developed world, and they make profit from it for 30 years," he said. "And we get it for only six months, and all the blame comes on us." 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Indian Express
04-06-2025
- Business
- Indian Express
Jaideep Ahlawat, wife Jyoti Hooda buy Rs 10 crore luxury apartment in Andheri West, pay Rs 60 lakh in stamp duty
Jaideep Ahlawat is no longer just another name in Bollywood's long list of actors and ranks among the industry's finest talents now, having set a benchmark in screen acting with exceptional performances one after another. A complete outsider who broke into show business through sheer hard work, Jaideep is finally receiving due recognition, offering hope to many aspiring actors who dream of entering the world of cinema. After years of struggle, Jaideep and his wife Jyoti Hooda recently purchased a luxurious apartment worth a whopping Rs 10 crore in the posh and upscale area of Andheri West, Mumbai. According to property registration documents reviewed by Square Yards, Jaideep and Jyoti registered the transaction on May 22, 2025. Located in Poorna Apartments, the apartment features a carpet area of 1,950 sq ft and a built-up area of 217.47 sq m. The purchase also includes four car parking spaces, and the couple paid Rs 60 lakh in stamp duty and Rs 30,000 in registration charges. The complex is situated in the heart of Andheri West, just 3 km from the Western Express Highway. Also Read | Archana Puran Singh, Parmeet Sethi travelled by business class, made sons fly economy: 'We made a rule, they had to earn it' Hailing from the Rohtak district in Haryana, Jaideep is an alumnus of the prestigious Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune. Though he began gaining attention early in his career itself in films like Khatta Meetha (2010), Aakrosh (2010), Chittagong (2011) and Rockstar (2011), it was director Anurag Kashyap's epic two-part crime drama Gangs of Wasseypur (2012) that truly brought him into the limelight. His performance as Shahid Khan, despite the limited screen time, earned Jaideep widespread acclaim, and he soon landed a key role in Kamal Haasan's action thriller Vishwaroopam (2013). Since then, Jaideep has delivered many notable performances in films such as Commando: A One Man Army (2013), Gabbar Is Back (2015), Raees (2017), Lust Stories (2018), Vishwaroopam II (2018), Raazi (2018), Ajeeb Daastaans (2021), Three of Us (2022), Jaane Jaan (2023) and Maharaj (2024). He also received global recognition for his performance in the widely acclaimed streaming series Paatal Lok.
