A sky-high temple in Ayodhya within the next four months — is what Home Minister Amit Shah vowed to the public on Monday afternoon, while addressing a rally in Jharkhand's Pakur district. A few states away, a student of New Delhi's Jamia Millia Islamia University sat alone at a Metro station, replaying in her head images of the horror that unfolded on campus on Sunday night.

On Sunday night, Delhi Police, under the direct jurisdiction of the Home Ministry, laid siege to the Jamia University campus that had protests going on against the Citizen (Amendment) Act 2019 ever since the legislation came into effect. A video of the police pouring liquid out of yellow cans on to a bus went viral over social media, and so did allegations of the protesters burning the bus and turning violent. The police subsequently lathi-charged the protesters — most of them Jamia students and alumni as well as residents of the adjoining Muslim neighborhood of Okhla where the campus is located.