Indian police have stopped hundreds of exiled Nepali Bhutanese from entering India yesterday 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, 650km north of Kolkata.

The refugees have to travel through West Bengal to reach Buddhist Bhutan from eastern Nepal.