Krishnagar, June 24: Around 50 young men stormed a Nadia primary school and asked the headmaster to certify that they had studied there till Class IV.

When Suphol Biswas refused, they threw him out of his office by the collar, dragged the teachers out of the staff-room and told the students that the school had given over. The rooms were locked up. And that is how they have been since Thursday.

The youths have threatened the headmaster and the four teachers with dire consequences if they dared open the school in the Manicknagar area of Shantipur, 75km from Calcutta.

The certificates will apparently help them get jobs in the Gulf.

“They claimed they had passed out from the school in the 1990s,” said Biswas. “I am the headmaster of this school from 1997. But I could not recognise any of them. Moreover, most records of former students were destroyed by the floods in 2000.”

Denied certificates, the youths started thumping Biswas’s desk and he asked them to “get out”.

But he was thrown out, instead. “They took me by my collar and dragged me out and then pulled out the teachers from the staff room. The students, who were having their mid-day meal, were told to go home and the rooms were locked up,” Biswas said.

The men, between 18 and 22, told the headmaster they wanted to “work in Dubai” and the certificates were essential.

The headmaster yesterday informed the Nadia primary school council about the incident, apparently after he failed to persuade the youths, all local residents, to let him reopen the school.

The four teachers, who live in the area, know most of the youths. The headmaster, who comes to work from Nabadwip, 30km away, said he could also identify them.

Council chairman Bibhas Biswas said the headmaster had to explain why he reported the matter late. “I have also asked him to lodge a police complaint.”

The headmaster lodged an FIR today. Shantipur officer-in-charge Anupam Chakraborty promised to “send a force tomorrow to open the school”.

Teacher Prangopal Das, who had joined the school four years ago, said: “We are repeatedly being threatened over phones that if we try to open the school, we will be murdered.”

The Manicknagar residents are apparently divided on whether the youths should be given the certificates. “Many fee if only a certificate is preventing them from getting a job, they should get it,” said Sambar Roy, the president of the village education committee.