The protesters at theRajabhatkhawa range office before locking it up on Thursday. (Anirban Choudhury)Our correspondent

Alipurduar, Dec. 31: Around 200 villagers today locked the range office and forest checkpost at Rajabhatkhawa and blocked the road connecting Jayanti to the Buxa hill to protest the arrest of 22 people who were picked up on charges of ransacking forest offices yesterday.

The blockade that began around 1pm left nearly 300 tourists and some picnickers stranded at Rajabhatkhawa, 18km from here.

Ratan Agarwal, who came to Jayanti from Calcutta along with his family and wanted to visit Jaldapara Wildlife Sanctuary this afternoon, was stuck at Rajabhatkhawa. “Huge number of tourists are coming to visit the Dooars because of problems in the hills. But if road blockade continues here, too, tourists will stop coming to the region and the local people will lose their income. The region has a lot of potential for tourism but the local people should be sincere and should not harass visitors at any cost,” Agarwal said.

The arrest was made last night after foresters lodged an FIR against villagers with Kalchini police. Yesterday, the villagers had gone on the rampage at the Rajabhatkhawa range office and the adjacent staff quarters, damaging furniture and destroying two forest vehicles to protest the firing by the forest guards allegedly on two of them in the early hours. The foresters, however, said they had fired on a gang of timber smugglers inside the forest.

Around 11am today, the villagers, armed with flags of the Congress, RSP and the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, took out a procession at Rajabhatkhawa before locking up the two forest offices.

Anurag Srivastav, the subdivisional officer of Alipurduar, and R. Sun Das, the block development officer of Kalchini, who reached the spot, held a meeting with the villagers.

“The protesters had asked for treatment of the injured person in yesterday’s firing, which is already underway. They wanted the foresters who opened fire to be arrested. We told them that an inquiry was on. Thirdly, they demanded the unconditional release of the 22. Since the accused have been produced in court, we will look into it,” Srivastav said. Around 4.30pm, the blockade was lifted, but the checkpost was still inaccessible.

Anoop Jaiswal, the additional superintendent of police of Alipurduar, said the arrested people were produced before the additional chief judicial magistrate of Alipurduar. Of them, nine women were released on bail by the court, while 13 were remanded in jail custody for 14 days.