Shards of broken window panes at Sabarmati Hostel, heavy police deployment at the main gate of the university and a heaviness in the air described the day in the JNU campus on Thursday, four days after a masked mob went on a rampage on the premises.
An uneasy lull prevailed in the campus as very few people were seen in the streets and eating joints, otherwise brimming with students, saw sparse crowd.
The unease at Sabarmati Hostel, which bore a heavy brunt of the violence unleashed by masked people on Sunday evening, was palpable as a few students were seen leaving the campus fearing for their safety.
Inside the popular hostel's mess, a stark silence welcomed visitors, no readers were seen at newspapers' podiums, and graffiti scrawled on walls and pillars described the January 5 incident as a 'Black Sunday 2020'.
'Jan-5-2020 JNU will never forget' read another graffiti, screaming in bold red, as students passed by in silence.
While the atmosphere inside the sprawling campus, otherwise vibrant, remained in the grip of uneasy calm, outside the main gate (North Gate of the JNU) a posse of police personnel kept a tight vigil to prevent any untoward incident.
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On the Baba Gang Nath Marg, students had to face hardship in hiring cabs or auto-rickshaws as barricades put up on both ends of the road, a little ahead of the North Gate, forced people to walk on foot for long before taking any public transport.
Charukeshi Bhatt, 24, pursuing Master's in Political Science from the university, said the "atmosphere of fear" in the campus is "still palpable".
"What happened on Sunday was sheer horror. I was on way to Delhi that day from Varanasi, and I was getting messages on my phone about the attack. I was frantically reaching out to my friends, many of whom lay huddled in one area, fearing for their safety," she told PTI.
Bhatt said the violence inflicted by the mob wanted to instil fear among the students, and on Wednesday night the library was totally deserted, "something I have never seen in JNU" as a student.
However, she asserted that though the incident may have affected the psyche of the students, "they cannot break the spirit of JNU".
Jyoti Kumari, another student who resides in the Sabarmati Hostel, recounted the horrific evening when she had seen "JNU girls in grip of abject fear".
"This was not to just commit violence, to damage and vandalise property, but to terrorise us into submission. I was there when the mob attacked our hostel, who were armed with shovels and other sharp objects, and as I was shooting a video to capture their act, one of the attackers threw a stone that injured my hand. But we will not relent, and continue to fight against what us wrong and unjust," she told PTI.
On Thursday, hundreds of JNU students marched to the HRD Ministry and were later stopped when they tried to go towards Rashtrapati Bhavan during when some of them were roughed up by police who used mild force, in escalating protests for the sacking of university Vice Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar over the violence in the campus.
As students protested, streets of JNU were largely deserted, while banners put up in the campus screamed -- 'JNU VC Must Resign' to ;Not an Inch Back! No to Fee Hike #FeeMustFall'.
The JNU students' union has been demanding a rollback of hostel and mess fee hike, and has boycotted registration for the next semester.
Bhawana Jha, a masters student in English literature at the JNU, said, "JNU students held a huge protest today. Though I did not attend it, but we stand in solidarity always, in this agitation."
"Protesters when they returned to the campus again raised slogans seeking the VC's ouster," she said.
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