Students crush the signboard of Brilliant Tutorials’ coaching centre on Boring Road on Tuesday. Picture by Ranjeet Kumar Dey

Patna, Nov. 15: Students of a private coaching centre ripped apart its signboard this afternoon finding it closed without prior information.

Around 50 students of the IIT-JEE coaching giant, Brilliant Tutorials, were in for a rude shock today when a locked gate greeted them instead of classes. The absence of prior information or any notice and inability to contact the branch director, Amrit Anand, left the IIT aspirants worried. They apprehended possible shutdown of the institute’s Boring Road branch after the closure of the Chennai-based institute’s Noida and Ranchi branches earlier this month.

Sources said Brilliant Tutorials has been facing severe financial crisis for the past one year after the death of its owner.

Around 1,500 students prepare for IIT with Brilliant Tutorials, Patna branch. Their fees differ according to the batches they opt for. The institute offers four training courses — Target IIT-JEE for school passouts, foundation classes for Class X students and two separate batches for Class XI and Class XII students. For a two-year IIT-JEE preparatory class, Brilliant Tutorials charge Rs 1.44 lakh. It is exclusive of taxes. Now, with the sudden shutdown of the centre, the investment of the students are at stake.

Smita Singh, who reached for her class with a relative to find the centre locked, said: “I have taken up the two-year foundation course. The institute has charged me Rs 87,000 after a scholarship.” She added that there was no word from the centre’s administration on the reasons for its sudden closure.

Another student, Saurav Sinha, said: “We came to know from the teachers that they were not being paid regularly. The institute’s financial crisis is not good and its branches in Noida and Ranchi have closed down.”

For the past four months, some teachers were being paid half their salary while others received even less. R.K. Singh, a physics teacher with Brilliant Tutorials, said: “We have not received our salaries for the past few months.”

The teachers said in spite of repeated inquiries over irregular salary to the Chennai administration, the headquarters only gave “false” assurances of payment. Non-payment of salary also forced teachers leave for other IIT-JEE preparatory classes.

Student Vivek Kumar said: “Many of our faculty members, like mathematics teacher Sriram Pandey and physics teacher Parwez Alam, left the institute in the past four months.”

An officer from SK Puri police station said: “The centre’s students or their guardians have not approached us for lodging an FIR. If no one comes forward, the police will lodge an FIR against the institute.”

The branch director could not be contacted.