PATNA, 29 January 2005 — Bihar’s school children yesterday surrounded the residence of the state’s governor demanding action to free several of their classmates abducted in the lawless eastern province.

Carrying placards asking questions like “Who’s next?,” more than 1,000 students in their school uniforms braved chilly winter rain and demanded state elections early next month be canceled until their schoolmates are found.

The protest in Bihar’s capital, Patna, came as police said the number of children kidnapped in the past 10 days totalled seven after two more abductions were reported on Thursday.

“We’re near to solving it all and once we get a breakthrough in one case we’ll solve the chain of kidnappings,” state police spokesman Neelmani Kumar said.

Thousands of children have been boycotting school, staging fasts and praying in the past week hoping “kid power” will win the release of the students.

Indian President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, meanwhile, expressed concern over the abductions, officials from the presidential palace in New Delhi said.

“The president is quite concerned about the kidnapping of children in Bihar over which he has been receiving a flood of e-mails and petitions from school students in the state,” an official said.

Official aides of Kalam were in “regular touch” with senior officials of the Bihar government, he said.

“The president is being kept informed about the developments in this regard,” the official added.

Doctors, lawyers and engineers are frequent abduction targets in crime-hit Bihar with many professionals hiring security guards. A number have fled the deeply poor, caste-ridden state.

But the kidnapping of children has turned into a controversy in the state polls where national ruling Congress ally Lalu Yadav’s regional party is seeking re-election.

The issue hit the headlines with the kidnapping of 14-year-old Kishlay Kaushal who was waiting for a bus when he was snatched nine days ago by abductors who sped off in a car in Patna.

Kishlay’s abduction gained nationwide notoriety and brought the issue of overall lawlessness to a head in Bihar’s election battle.

Former Premier Atal Behari Vajpayee, whose Hindu fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Party is allied with the opposition Janata Dal (United) in Bihar, made an emotional appeal for Kishlay’s release at an election rally Thursday, saying, “I want Kishlay back. I want my younger brother back.”

So far Kishlay’s family has not said whether they have received a ransom demand for their son but his father, K.K. Gupta, a senior government revenue official, said his “heart is sinking as time passes.”

Ransom demands can be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars in the case of rich industrialists but poorer people are also targeted and smaller sums demanded in Bihar, India’s second most populous state with 80 million people.

Students at fee-paying schools are also frequent prey as anxious parents quickly cough up although families rarely admit to paying.