Six months ago, Krishna Prasad Baral (pictured), a teacher at Himalaya Secondary School in Mainakaderi, Saptari, was threatened by the JTMM and was forced to flee to Damak, Jhapa.

I was the only pahadi in the entire school. When the JTMM threatened to abduct me, I had to flee. Now I have no job and a family to support, said Baral. He started being threatened after other teachers at the school were targeted.

Shivadhan Rai had been abducted, and Shantiram Adhikari was told to leave the village within five weeks. Baral says the principal of the school, the district education officer, and local human rights activists were aware that Baral was being threatened.

Meanwhile in the hills, many madhesi teachers are being forced to leave. Durga Sinha, 24 (pictured) was transferred to Tapericha Lower Secondary School in Dolpa three years ago. She was earning a good living teaching at the school and giving private classes. As a single mother she had to support two children who were studying in Kathmandu.

When madhesis did not let pahadis live in the tarai, pahadis started doing the same thing with madhesis in pahadi-dominated areas, says Sinha. She says that both local Maoists and the school administration were responsible for spreading fear in the region.

Sinha, who now lives in Kathmandu, no longer has a regular source of income and has been compelled to pull her kids out of school in Kathmandu and send them to her parents in Siraha. She says madhesi teachers from other schools have also fled due to fear and intimidation from pahadi groups.

Minister of Education and Sports Pradeep Nepal said he was not aware that teachers are being displaced from both the tarai and the hill regions. I am in touch regularly with district education officers, but have not received such information about the displacement of teachers, he said.