Krishnagar, April 24: Three Nadia schoolgirls fleeing to Mumbai, fearing poor exam results, were caught by the government railway police at Howrah last night.

Soumi Banerjee, who wrote the Madhyamik exams this year, her sister, Bulti, a Class IX student of Boro Andulia High School in Chapra, and their friend, Debamitra Mukherjee, who studies in Class VIII in the same school, had run away from home on Monday.

“Soumi and Bulti’s father, Goutam Banerjee, works in a construction company in Mumbai. Having done badly in their exams this year, the three girls decided to go to Mumbai in search of a better life,” an officer said.

Members of an NGO in Chapra, about 130km from Calcutta, brought the girls home today.

“None of them wanted to study in their schools anymore and thought of going to Mumbai where Gautam works,” said an officer of Chapra police station.

Debamitra’s father, Ramprasad Mukherjee, a teacher in Andulia High School, said his daughter seemed to have lost interest in studies of late.

“A few days back, I had threatened to punish her if she did not study,” Ramprasad said. “She always wanted to go to a big city. I told her to stay in the village, study hard and then shift to Calcutta or some other city for higher studies.”

Soumi and Bulti’s mother, Nandita, said her daughters would pester her to tell their father to take them to Mumbai.

“Influenced by Hindi films, they thought was easy to have a good life in Mumbai. But I did not listen to them,” Nandita said, adding that she warned her daughters of punishment if they did badly in their exams.

The girls said they were scared they would have to face the music after their results came out.

“So we decided to leave for Mumbai where we felt we would have a better life than in Chapra. We thought Soumi’s father would not let us down once we landed there,” Debamitra said.

The three slipped out of their homes, having stolen Rs 5,000 each.

They boarded a Sealdah-bound train from Krishnagar around 6 on Monday evening. They spent that night at Sealdah station. The girls took a taxi and reached Howrah station last evening.

“The bustling Howrah station left the girls confused. They called up a friend in Chapra to find out how to buy tickets. The friend informed their families, who had lodged missing diaries by then,” the officer in charge of Chapra police station, Sumon Chatterjee, said.