Delhi: Asked to leave, coaching students in a tight spot

Also Read | Near Delhi University, PGs and tutorials shut doors after cops come knocking

And even though police have dismissed a notice being circulated online as fake, many students, PG owners and residents of the area said they had seen it. Azra Sultan, the resident of a PG in the locality, said the notice had been put up at her PG.

“I’ve seen the notice but there’s no stamp on it and no signature of the SHO. PG owners have asked us to leave but I won’t because I’ve heard all this could be rumours,” she said.

However, Navneet, who is preparing for state civil service examinations, said he will buy train tickets to return home to Jharkhand. “We were in our coaching class on Tuesday afternoon when around 1 pm, our teacher stepped out of class because police had come. He came back and told us classes would stop from the next day. We even received a voice message from him saying he had tried to reason with them, but that he had no option but to stop classes. My PG owner is also asking us to leave for a week. It looks like I will have to return home during this time,” he said. He takes classes at Prudence coaching centre.

PG and coaching centre owners who had spoken to police themselves said no explanation was provided for the move.

However, in conversations in the locality, they have been linked to a mix between violence on new year’s eve in the area three years ago and the anti-CAA and NRC protests taking place in the city.

In January 2017, a 27-year-old man had been arrested in connection with a case of alleged molestation of a woman and attack on police personnel.

Meanwhile, writer Arundhati Roy and actor Zeeshan Ayyub Wednesday addressed students at the Faculty of Arts at Delhi University’s North Campus. Roy warned the students to be wary of the National Population Register, cleared by the Union Cabinet this week.

“The NPR will be the database for the NRC… but we should have a plan. When they come to your house for the NPR and ask for your name, let’s choose five names that we will all submit. Let’s submit 7 Race Course Road as our address and let’s all choose one phone number. We will have to do a lot of subversion… we really need to have a plan,” she said.