"Chant our slogans or face the people's army punishment," a Maoist militant warned Umesh Mishra. The 12-year-old schoolboy was forced to run shouting Maoist slogans with the rest of the 200 students and teachers who were abducted on 20 May from the Aiselukharka School in Sindhupalchok. All students and teachers of Class Six and above were force marched to the Maoists meetings. Umesh, now at a hospital in Kathmandu, still shivers with fear. The Maoists forced the group to run up the mountains shouting revolutionary slogans. When his principal became breathless and couldn't shout slogans, they made him carry their flag all the way up to Sipapokhre village. Umesh was so traumatised that he developed heart problems and is now at Sahid Gangalal Heart Centre in the Valley. He has recurring nightmares about the Maoists.

"We were made to run all morning, forced to listen to speeches in the sun all day long, and then we had to walk all the way home in the evening," he recalls. Umesh's health started deteriorating. First, he just had fever, but later he was diagnosed with a heart ailment.

This was the second time he was abducted. The rebels took him and his friends a fortnight earlier for military training but Umesh managed to escape. When he was taken to the training area again, he saw his classmate armed with a gun and dressed in combat fatigues. "If they had taken me, I'd have ended up like him," says Umesh. His elder brother, Purna, says many schoolchildren in Sindhupalchok live in fear of Maoists threats and abductions. He said: "Some join the people's army, others live in fear, there is no other alternative."