Around noon, reporters massed outside the Holy Child Auxilium School in South Delhi were taken aback with no less than the union minister for human resource development, Smriti Irani, arrived at the school, along with senior education officials.

In the morning, students had been turned away from the school gates after the authorities found some men had broken into the school in the early hours Friday.

The news created a stir since the school is run by a Christian group. In the last two months, there have been five instances of vandalism and theft in the city's churches.

But that wasn't the reason that Irani, a senior minister in the Modi government, rushed to the school. She came because she is an alumnus of the school. She has studied till class 12th at the institution.

While Irani did not speak with the media before she left, the school principal, Sister Lucy George, came out and addressed the waiting TV cameras. She said the break-in was discovered when a member of the housekeeping staff found the doors to the administrative office and the principal office open in the morning. Inside, cupboards had been ransacked, and about Rs 12,000 had been stolen. No religious objects had been touched.

While the CCTV camera inside the principal office were found to have been disconnected, the CCTV cameras in the corridor are reported to have taken images of the men. A deputy commissioner of Delhi police was at the spot, guiding investigations.

The school is located in the posh locality of Vasant Vihar. Further down the road lie foreign embassies and consulates.

As television broadcast vans lined up outside the school, the residents of the neighbourhood wondered what exactly had happened.

"Why would someone taken the trouble to break into a school for just Rs 12,000?" said Manisha, a middle aged woman who lives in the area. As she got into an autorickshaw, a Sikh driver who overheard the conversation, remarked, "Kejriwal ko chalne nahi denge. They won't allow Kejriwal's government to run. They will do this every other day."

Kejriwal, meanwhile, tweeted: