Bhubaneswar, Oct. 13: Land protesters held four senior Posco executives, including three South Koreans, hostage for six hours in an Orissa village today, allegedly after they ignored an earlier company undertaking to stay out of the area.

General managers K.S. Choi, S.H. Nam and T.J. Ahn and assistant manager Dipak Ojha were released only after another written assurance that the South Korean steelmaker’s officials would not visit the area again.

The executives were held at Dhinkia in Jagatsinghpur, 130km southeast of Bhubaneswar, while surveying the village’s outskirts for the installation of an electric tower.

Land activists have been agitating for months against Posco’s plans to set up a 12-million-tonne plant in Paradip, which at Rs 51,000 crore is the biggest foreign investment project in India.

The hostage crisis is the second involving the company and the village, located 10km from Paradip, where three local Posco employees were held captive on May 11 while explaining to villagers the company’s welfare plans for them.

They were freed after several hours following a Posco assurance to consider acquiring private land elsewhere if the government helped the company find it.

Today’s crisis ended around 4.30pm after marathon negotiations between the protesters and district police.

“The hostages were released after the officer in charge of the local police station gave an undertaking that Posco officials would not come to the area again,” Jagatsinghpur district police chief Y.K. Jethwa said.

“The detained officials are on their way back home,” collector P.K. Meherda said.

“We condemn the incident and are deeply concerned about the safety and security of our officials,” Posco said.

The executives had arrived at the area around 10am. “They were inspecting the area when the villagers surprised them,” Posco spokesman Shashanka Pattnaik said.

Around 40 protesters led the men along a muddy dirt road to Dhinkia where they were detained inside a temple as stick-wielding villagers stood guard outside.

“We had time and again asked Posco officials not to enter the three gram panchayat areas which will be affected by the proposed plant,” anti-Posco agitation leader Abhay Sahoo said.

“They had given a written assurance, but today the officials tried to enter the area and conduct a survey.”

For the past 27 months, the state government has not made any headway in its efforts to acquire 400 acres of private land in the gram panchayats of Dhinkia, Gadakujang and Nuagaon after residents erected bamboo barricades at the entrances of their villages.