Everything is finished, is this democracy? asks Jamia law student

"Everything is finished," said a wailing Anugya, a law student of Jamia Millia Islamia, on Monday as the police crackdown at the institute a day before triggered widespread protests across the country.

Jamia virtually turned into a battle zone after police entered the varsity and forced hundreds of students out of the campus on Sunday evening.

A day after the police action, several students recalled how they hid in the bushes, under tables in the library and even in urinals to escape police batons.

"I am a law student here. I was to appear for a exam on the Constitution. Everything is finished. There is nothing left. How can I study the Constitution now? Have they left anything? I wish they could see what they did to us just to stop some students from protesting.

"They entered the girls' hostel, the boys' hostel. They (students) ran for their lives. Is this democracy? Where are we living? All night my friends have been crying. I just saw my university, I couldn't control myself. They have done this to my home," she told reporters.

Anugya, who is from Ranchi, said that she herself ran when the police entered the campus and recalled how she and some of her friends went to the homes of their local guardians. She said she came back to the university to take her things so that she could go back to Ranchi, her hometown.

"I am not even a Muslim. But here I am still on the frontlines. Why? Because of what has happened to my family," she said, adding that when she came to Delhi, she thought she was safe on the campus, but now she wasn't so sure anymore.

An inconsolable Anugya said that she believed education meant the power to protest against what is wrong, which, she said was now in question.

"We have not received so much education only to sit at home and not use it. Do we get educated only to operate machines? No. We get educated so that if something wrong happens to people around me, then I can stand with them," she said.

Thousands of students took to the streets in the national capital on Monday against the police crackdown in Jamia Millia Islamia with demonstrations at campuses of JMI, Delhi University and India Gate amid heavy police deployment.

As many as 50 detained students of JMI were released even as the situation on the campus remained tense with scores of hostel boarders leaving for home. University Vice-Chancellor Najma Akhtar demanded a high-level inquiry into the police action on Sunday after a protest against the amended Citizenship Act turned violent.

Delhi Police said that the crime branch will investigate the violence in which four DTC buses, 100 private vehicles and 10 police bikes were damaged and asserted that it used "maximum restraint, minimum force" despite being "provoked" by protesters.

Several students of Delhi University boycotted exams and held protest outside the Arts Faculty in North Campus even as a large number of police personnel were deployed by authorities to prevent any flare up.

Braving freezing cold, agitated students, some of them shirtless, protested outside the the gates of JMI university. Slogans of 'Inquilab Zindabad' rent the air as the students took out a march, demanding a CBI inquiry into the alleged "police brutality".