Patna, March 30: Bhojpur police on Wednesday unfolded the mystery behind the alleged kidnapping of four minor boys, three of them students of a public school at Ara, following their safe recovery from a hotel and a house in Patna.

The police had issued a red-corner notice asking the police officials of Bihar and other states to trace the boys after the issue was raised in the Assembly.

Bhojpur superintendent of police (SP) M.R. Naik said a police team was sent to Patna following a tip-off that the boys, aged between 12 and 14 years, were staying in a hotel on Frazer Road in Patna after escaping from their native Koelwar and Madhupur villages in Bhojpur district.

While three of them —Mukesh Kumar, Ranjeet and Dhananjay — were recovered from the hotel, the fourth one Ravi Kant was recovered from the house of a businessman at Patrakar Nagar in Patna.

“All the four boys were produced in Ara court today. The statement of the boys has already been recorded under Section 164 of the CrPC,” he added.

The SP said separate police teams were sent to Maharashtra, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Delhi to know the whereabouts of the boys as prima facie the police suspected them to have fallen victims to the gang involved in human trafficking.

During interrogation, the boys revealed that they had escaped from their house as they were fed up with the alleged misbehaviour of their parents. “The two brothers —Ranjeet and Dhanjeet — complained that their parents often quarrelled and their father used to beat up their mother after getting drunk,” Naik told The Telegraph over the phone from Ara.

According to the plan, the boys left their houses at around 1pm on March 14 on the pretext of attending coaching classes. They asked their neighbour one Subhash to give them his cell phone. They later reached Jameer Halt on foot, sold their mobile for Rs 200 and then boarded a train for Patna.

At around 1am on March 15 they alighted from the train at Patna Junction and reached Maharaj complex adjacent to the Patna railway station where they met a security guard, who took pity on them and helped them get “employed” at a restaurant.

Later, Ravi left the restaurant and started working as a domestic help in the house of a businessman, Krishna Kumar, at Patrakar Nagar.

Naik said the investigating officer of the case has been asked to submit a petition in the court asking it to provide relief to Chand Mian and Tenni Mian, who were arrested and forwarded to jail as they were named accused in the FIR.

“Though the boys were in touch with their relatives and even visited their houses at Maner in Patna, none of them revealed the truth and kept on pressuring the police to arrest the three others accused — Irshad, Manager Paswan and Tuntun Paswan,” he added.