Bhagalpur, May 17: Naxalites released seven poll officials, whom they had abducted on May 15, near Kaua Kol village under rebel dominated Nawada district, about 250km south of Patna, around 11 last night.

The rebels had triggered a landmine blast after which they abducted the officials while they were on their way on panchayat election duty at Mariyam Hills in Jamui district.

The district magistrate (DM), Jamui, Manish Kumar, with the help of security forces, brought the seven persons at his district office to take down their accounts and make them speak to journalists.

Sources said the rebels released the officials after negotiations with two ministers hailing from the region — Narendra Singh and Damodar Raut — apart from other senior police and administrative officials.

Fear was visible on the faces of all the seven per- sons even though they had been freed.

Narsh Sah, a Grade IV employee at KKM College, Jamui, was sweating profusely at the DM’s office even though he was safe amid a large number of armed men around.

“I had never thought I would land up in Maoists’ den. They (the rebels) gave us food and treated us well. But they made us walk around the hills constantly,” he recalled.

The six others looked equally exhausted.

“All of us were travelling in a vehicle when the explosion occurred. After all of us fell off the vehicle and then saw an armed group who came to us and apologised before ordering us to follow them,” Sah said.

They said they realised that they were in Maoist captivity after they were “taken to a village through dense forests and surrounded by armed men”. The Maoists had had taken away their cellphones soon after overpowering them.

“We were asked to walk through the dense forest throughout the night. Some armed men-in-uniform were escorting us from a safe distance,” said Dhiraj Kumar, a teacher at a middle school at Malaypur in Jamui.

The men said they were unable to figure out the places and streets because they were unknown to the topography of those areas.

The hostage crisis might be over with the release of the seven men, but a new problem has cropped up at the end of the administration: teachers at government schools have refused to go on polling duty in the future.

District officials came to know about the release of the abducted officials around 11am after Vijay — the younger brother of Kapildeo Tanti, one of the captives — informed the administration about it on his cellphone.

The Naxalites were demanding the release of two of their comrades in lieu of the release of the election officials.

Sources said Narendra Singh and Damodar Raut “used their influence” to broker peace with the rebels that paved the path for the release of the seven persons.

“The government has not accepted the demand of releasing the arrested Maoists. But it has surely struck some deal with the rebels to facilitate the release of the employees which we are not aware of,” a district official told The Telegraph.