ARGHAKHANCHI, Feb 24 - Maoists on Saturday freed four persons, including three school teachers, whom they had abducted for not being present at their program at Pokhari of the district on Friday.

The Maoist cadres had abducted the three-- Humlal Poudel, Thakur Panthi and Raghunath Pandey-- teachers of Nepal Rastriya Higher Secondary School, and member of the school management committee (SMC), Khumananda Panthi, from their respective houses on Friday night, alleging that all of them had failed to present themselves at the Maoist's mass meeting in the afternoon.

Even though there was a meeting of the SMC at the time and the Maoists were infomed about this, the latter had issued a diktat to all teachers and SMC members to be present at their mass meeting, which was organized at the school premises.

"Around a dozen Maoists broke into the house while we were preparing to have supper and forcibly took him away," said Poudel's wife Ishwora. Police said all the four were release at around 4 pm Saturday.

When contacted, all those free persons chose not to speak.