Rubina Ali, a child actress in the Oscar-winning movie Slumdog Millionaire, stands inside her house as it is demolished by local authorities at a slum area in Mumbai, India, Wednesday. (Rajanish Kakade/Associated Press)

The shanty home of another Slumdog Millionaire child star was torn down by Mumbai authorities Wednesday as they demolished part of a city slum where she lived.

Munni Qureshi — the stepmother of nine-year-old Rubina Ali, who portrayed a young Latika, the Oscar-winning film's heroine — said her husband was beaten by police who were supervising the demolition. She said he was taken to a hospital with minor injuries.

"How can the police barge in any time without giving us notice?" Qureshi said, as she wept holding her forehead. Neighbours poured water over her to keep her cool as she sat in the scorching summer sun with Rubina.

Rubina's father, carpenter Rafiq Qureshi, later returned from the hospital with his right arm in a clean white sling. He stepped across the threshold of the home he built seven years ago with about $2,000 US. Above him was open sky. He rubbed his forehead with his good hand.

"It's best that I move," he said, adding that the filmmakers are helping find the family a new home. "They are doing what they promised," he said.

Slumdog filmmakers say they've done their best to help the young stars. They set up a trust to ensure the children get proper homes, a decent education and a nest egg when they finish high school. They have also donated $747,500 US to a charity to help slum kids in Mumbai.

Producer Christian Colson has described the trust as substantial, but won't tell anyone how much it contains — not even the children's parents — for fear of making the youngsters vulnerable to exploitation.

Oscar glory doesn't stop slum demolition

Slumdog Millionaire won eight Oscars and brought in more than $326 million US, but it has done little so far to improve the lives of the film's two impoverished child stars, Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail and Rubina.

Dozens of police with bamboo batons walked around the alley where Rubina's house is located and supervised demolition crews of young men wielding sledgehammers and metal rods who tore down the shanty homes.

Last week, bulldozers demolished Azhar's home in a similar cleanup drive in a different part of the same slum. By Wednesday, temporary homes had already sprung up in the area. His family tied blankets and sheets of blue and yellow tarpaulin to a wooden frame to create a shelter.

Slums that are destroyed because they are illegal or in the way of city development plans often resurface. Government promises of housing are not often met and when slum-dwellers are given homes, it is often in poor-quality buildings on the outskirts of cities, far from their jobs.

Rubina and Azhar were discovered on the Mumbai streets by the filmmakers. The film's adult stars, Dev Patel and Freida Pinto, have since shot to international fame. The lives of the two poor child stars — who live in the slum called Garib Nagar, or the "city of the poor" — haven't changed much.

"I'm feeling bad," Rubina told The Associated Press. "My house had been demolished. I'm thinking about where to sleep."

Film alone cannot solve problems: social worker

Dinaz Stafford, a clinical psychologist who helps run Salaam Baalak Trust, which works with street children in India, is not surprised that the film's success hasn't done more to change the lives of the two child stars.

A film cannot change a life, she said. That takes time.

"You cannot help disadvantaged children by making a film or giving them vast quantities of money," said Stafford, who helped direct 22 street kids in the 1988 Oscar-nominated film Salaam Bombay.

"They'll just spend it. The money is a nightmare. It throws them off."

She said the biggest problem facing the Slumdog child stars is the distorting power of the media.

"The kid thinks he's a celebrity, then it all comes crashing down," she said, adding that she thinks director Danny Boyle has done a good job.

"He's stood by his children and his commitment," she said. "There is no law that says filmmakers should create social welfare organizations to change the world. By making a successful film, they've raised an issue. That's a way to change society."