Virtually everything he owned had been hauled away by a rubbish removal service.
He was dumbfounded and had no idea why this had happened to his apartment on East 74th Street on the Upper East Side.
"Just think of everything that you've acquired in your lifetime in your house just gone!" said Nilay Shroff, a tenant.
Nilay Shroff couldn't believe what he was seeing. He had just returned home from a long day at work and his entire apartment had been cleaned out.
"Right here, I had a dresser before, in here was completely empty, my air conditioner was still in there, my microwave, all of my pots and pans, every single cabinet was just cleared out," Shroff said, "I literally had the clothes that I was wearing on my back and nothing else."
What Nilay did next is what any of us would have done. He thought he'd been robbed, so he called 911. But when detectives arrived to investigate, they realized it wasn't a burglary at all.
"The cops were like, 'We've never seen anything like this.' They were laughing," Shroff said.
He says the landlord later admitted that rubbish removal contractors had cleaned out the wrong apartment.
Instead of 2B down the hall, they cleaned out apartment 2D. They removed virtually all of Nilay's possessions like his passport, his credit cards, his checkbook, and even the dirty dishes in his sink.
"It's every single piece of clothing that I owned. Like, underwear, I have to go to Target the next morning to just buy underwear," Shroff said.
Nilay has since replaced much of it and found another photo of his late mother to take the place of the one that was thrown out.
The building, at 409 East 74th Street, is managed by the Mautner-Glick Company.
Officials could not be reached for comment.
Nilay has filed a lawsuit and is demanding $40,000 in damages. The young computer consultant has been forced to reboot his life.
"I was just shocked, in shock," Shroff said.
