In the middle of a tiff with an app cab driver on Saturday, Zehra Ali Khan was asked if she was an Indian. The 20-year-old came home and wept that night.

On Monday, it was a different Zehra, who walked along Park Street with hundreds of others to condemn the police crackdown on students protesting against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the proposed National Register of Citizens.

“There is an atmosphere of distrust against one community. My mother is scared I joined the rally. It is sad I need the Tricolour to prove I am an Indian,” said the second-year sociology student at St Xavier’s College (Autonomous).

The rally was organised by the students’ council and alumni association of St Xavier’s College. Armed with posters, placards and miniature Tricolours, students, former students and some teachers assembled at the college quadrangle around 4pm.

The walk started around 4.15pm and went through Rawdon Street, Short Street and Wood Street before coming back to the college.

“St. Xavier’s always stands by students, whether they are our students or students from any other institution in India.... The silent march was organised to show that we stand in solidarity with students,” said Father Dominic Savio, the principal of the college.

The 159-year-old Park Street institution does not have a students’ union and its students are not known for expressing dissent outside the campus. Several students who walked on Monday said it was the first time they took to the streets for a cause.

Sarbani Bandyopadhyay, a teacher of sociology, said she had not seen a rally like this from St Xavier’s College in the 16 years of her association with the institution. “The looming threat this time has been very well perceived by the students,” she said.

A team of policemen escorted the rally from start to end. “Era to michhil kore na (these students don’t take part in marches),” a constable told another as the rally took right from Park Street. “Ekhon korchhe, tahole bojho (They are doing it now. Imagine the situation),” came the reply.

Many students said they were opposed to the CAA and the proposed NRC but the police crackdown on Jamia Millia Islamia and Aligarh Muslim University students prompted them to step out and protest.

“We stand in solidarity with the students of JMI and AMU,” read a giant banner at the front.

“We are standing by our fellow students. The police entered libraries and toilets to beat up students. Atrocity can never be the way forward,” said Jivraj Singh, a final-year BCom student and a member of the executive committee of the students’ council.

Talks on the need to send a message of solidarity with fellow students were on at the college for over a week. But the council members hardly had any experience of organising a rally and were sceptical that the walk “could turn unruly and tarnish the image of the institution”.

Monday’s march showed the fear was misplaced.

Some former students of Farhat Bano, who teaches political science at the college, are at Jamia. Some of them were on the campus during the police raid on December 15. “They called me later to give vivid details of the horror — how some of them slid under the tables to escape the assault,” Bano told Metro.