By Krittivas Mukherjee
KOLKATA, India, Dec 11 (Reuters)
- Indian police have stopped hundreds of exiled Nepali Bhutanese from entering India on Sunday as they tried to return to Bhutan, officials said.
Over 100,000 ethnic Nepali Bhutanese live in camps in eastern Nepal on the border with India after Bhutan's king stripped them of citizenship or forced them to leave because they had campaigned for democracy in the Himalayan kingdom.
"They (the refugees) have been trying to cross into India in small groups on their way to Bhutan, but we have been pushing them back," police official S.L. Sarkar told Reuters from Siliguri, 650 km (400 miles) north of Kolkata, capital of India's West Bengal state.
The refugees have to travel through West Bengal state to reach Buddhist Bhutan from eastern Nepal.
Gun-totting Indian police watched the India-Nepal border as the refugees, some carrying children, argued with authorities to be allowed to go to Bhutan, a five-hour drive from the frontier, officials said.
"The people we pushed back are sitting quietly on the other side of the border," Sarkar said.
Talks between officially Hindu Nepal and Bhutan to settle the refugees' fate -- described by some rights groups as the world's most neglected refugee crisis -- have been stalled since 2003.
About 90,000 Nepali Bhutanese, most with farms or businesses, were forced to leave Bhutan in the early 1990s. They allege racial discrimination by authorities in Bhutan.
The U.N. refugee agency said in August the refugees should stay at their camps where it can provide them with aid rather than get stranded on the border in attempts to return home.
All food comes from the United Nations and aid agencies.