Braving early morning showers, hundreds of school children on Friday marched to the Raj Bhavan in Patna seeking Governor Buta Singh's intervention to secure the safe release of four fellow students kidnapped in the past fortnight or so from different parts of Bihar.

Shouting slogans like 'We want Kislay' and 'Give us a safe future", nearly 700 students assembled in front of the Raj Bhavan.

A delegation of ten students and five office-bearers of different child welfare organisations, including Bihar Public School Students Welfare Association Chief B K Singh, met the governor.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Singh said the governor was apprised of the situation and told that parents of school students across the city would abstain from voting in the forthcoming assembly election if the abducted children did not return safe to their homes.

"It is a matter of serious concern that the state police still does not have any clue about the whereabouts of Kislay and other students," he said.

Ravi Kant, a student of the DAV Public School, was kidnapped from Biharsharif in Nalanda district on Monday, barely six days after the abduction of Kislay, a student of the Delhi Public School in Patna.

Dipa Kumar, yet another student of the DAV Public School, Bhagalpur, went missing on Tuesday.
 
Sumit Kumar, a class VII student of St. Paul Public School in Patna, left for school on Tuesday morning, but has not returned since.

� Copyright 2005 PTI.

Photograph: Deepak Kumar/ Saab Press