Twelve people, including four men and three women, reportedly hailing from Baramulla district of Jammu and Kashmir, were detained by the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) personnel near Harlakhi on the Nepal border in Madhubani district on Wednesday.

The detention of the Kashmiri citizens assumes significance in the wake of the arrest of over a dozen suspected activists of a militant outfit, Indian Mujahideen, from Madhubani district, which is close to the porous international border, in the past one year.

Senior officials of the Intelligence Bureau, SSB and those from the district police were interrogating the suspects at a border outpost. The credentials of all the four men and three women, who were in the age group of 20-30 years, were being verified. The group included five minor children.

A senior official of the SSB said that the Kashmiri citizens were detained by the personnel of the BOP at Pipron village under Harlakhi police station in Madhubani district, around 250km northeast of Patna, while they were trying to sneak into India from Nepal. One of them identified as Mohammed Firdaus Ahmed was carrying a passport issued from Pakistan.

Madhubani superintendent of police Ranjeet Kumar Mishra said that the district police officials rushed to the spot after getting information about the detention of about a dozen people hailing from Jammu and Kashmir.

Mishra said: “The detainees are yet to be handed over to the district police. The sub-divisional police officer of Benipatti and the station house officer of Harlakhi police station have been asked to keep a tab on the developments,” he told The Telegraph on the phone from Madhubani.

Sources, however, said that the Kashmiri citizens were detained by the SSB personnel during routine checking of a bus from Jatahi to Patna. The suspects had boarded the bus for Patna and from there we were scheduled to catch a train to reach their destination in Jammu and Kashmir.

The suspects were identified as Mohammed Firdaus Ahmed, his wife Sabiya, Mustaq Ahmed, his wife Ameena, Nazir Ahmed, his wife Sumera and Mohammed Parwez. The identities of five others are being withheld as they are minors.

During interrogation, they revealed that they had been abducted by militants about 13 years ago and taken to Karachi in Pakistan. They spent a few years in Muzaffarabad, the capital. Three of them later got married to Pakistani girls. However, they preferred to keep mum over any sort of training imparted by militant outfits operating in Pakistan.

They told the intelligence sleuths that they reached Nepal’s Kathmandu by plane from where they went to Janakpur in Nepal. They reached Jatahi on the India-Nepal border by bus and catch another bus for Patna. “We were on way to our native place in Jammu and Kashmir,” a senior police officer quoted Parwez as saying.