Malda, Jan. 3: Alert classmates, a prompt headmaster and over 50 other people caught four men fleeing with a 13-year-old girl in a lightning operation yesterday involving a flurry of phone calls and tree trunks rolled onto a road to stall a speeding car.

Around 3.30pm yesterday, the Class VII student of Premabhaktipur High Madrasah was getting ready to go home after a unit test when the car pulled up in front of her.

“It was so sudden that for a moment we were scared it would ram into us. Four men got out and dragged our friend in. We heard her scream as the car disappeared down the road that leads to Chandipur,” a friend of the abducted girl said.

Only a handful of them were left on the madrasah grounds when the incident took place and they ran together to headmaster Zamil Akhtar. He was smart enough not to call police because the force surely could not have moved as fast as the villagers did.

Zamil rang up the pradhan of the Rashidabad panchayat. In his absence, his deputy Shakil Shiraji took the call.

Shiraji realised the car would have to go past the panchayat office, some 2km from the madrasah, and swung into action. Several phone calls followed and an army of people descended on the only motorable road going out of the village.

Tree trunks from the roadside were rolled to the middle as the villagers lay in wait for the white car.

It came minutes later and got stuck. Villagers armed with sticks and sickles converged on it and found the girl on the floor, gagged and tied.

In the melee, one of the alleged abductors fled, but the four others were caught.

The residents of Premabhaktipur refused to hand them over to the police till late last night. The police got custody of Rustam Ali, Rakib Sheikh, Maqbul Hossain and Faridul Islam past 10pm, when some of the villagers became worried that one of the four could die because of their thrashing.

“The villagers had little faith in the lawkeepers and they were not wrong. Had we depended on the police, the abductors would have fled,” said the deputy pradhan of the Congress-led panchayat.

Some alleged that the police took two hours to reach the village, 15km from Harishchandrapur police station.

Malda superintendent Bhuban Mondol said the force had been busy with elections at Chanchol College. “But they were prompt in visiting Premabhaktipur. Four persons have been arrested. We are looking for the fifth. We are also trying to find out if they are linked to a bigger gang,” he added.

All the four suspected traffickers are from Harischandrapur, 450km from Calcutta.

Hundreds of children from north Bengal go missing every year. They are trafficked across the country and abroad, through Nepal. NGO Maiti Nepal, which works among girl children, has said after a study that Siliguri is emerging as a “wholesale trading” centre for trafficked children.