Many people from the Northeast who had fled TN en masse last week have already started making enquiries with the state police about returning.
Senior officials confirmed that the police helpline launched received many calls on Monday with most people enquiring about the prevailing situation in TN and the possibility of an early return.
Incidentally, Chennai Central, which had witnessed a mass exodus of Northeastern passengers last week, slowly limped back to normalcy after authorities decided not to attach extra coaches to the North and Northeast bound trains on Monday.
However, sources said that a lot more confidence-building measures needed to be taken as the special trains returning from Assam are expected to be more or less empty.
Police sources said that Northeastern people would return in large numbers in little over a week and added that their families were preventing the youth from returning to work.
Curiously, a group of Assamese at Central station said that their families had asked them to return home in view of reports of attacks in the South. ‘My parents said I could get back to work in Tamil Nadu once the problems eased,” said a young Assamese rushing back home.
Over 20,000 people are estimated to have left TN in the last week though the actual numbers could be much higher as most people had not bothered to buy tickets, revealed a duty constable on the
platform.