Law enforcers yesterday freed four Indian students of Jalalabad Ragib-Rabeya Medical College in Sylhet. They were detained early Friday allegedly on suspicion of being involved in the September 7 blast in New Delhi.

Mystery shrouds over who actually detained them, why and who interrogated them.

Law enforcers had earlier vehemently denied picking up the students but yesterday Inspector General of Police Hasan Mahmud Khandaker said the students from Indian Jammu and Kashmir state had been detained for questioning. He did not say which agency picked them up and why.

Meanwhile, final-year medical student Mohammad Wasim and doctor Ashrafuzzaman Chowdhury are still missing. They are traceless since September 22 and Wednesday night.

Maj Gen (retd) Nazmul Islam, principal of the medical

college, told The Daily Star that the four Indian were dropped off a microbus in front of the college around 6:30am yesterday. He could not say who dropped them off, our Sylhet correspondentreports.

The freed students are Tousif Ahmed and Danesh Batt, third and fourth year MBBS students, and interns Tosaddek Rashid and Amir Amin Reshmi.

The principal had claimed that Rapid Action Battalion personnel picked up the four students Friday at the college dormitory.

Talking to journalists after a meeting at the home ministry yesterday morning, IGP Hasan Mahmud Khandker admitted that law enforcers picked up the four Indian nationals in Sylhet. He declined to say which agency detained them.

Asked whether the students were arrested in connection with the bomb blast at New Delhi High Court in September, Home Minister Shahara Khatun declined to comment. She only said it is a sensitive issue and an investigation is underway.

On the other two missing students, the principal said Indian national Wasim attended college last on September 22 and then he went on leave. The college authority filed no general diary in this connection as they could not be sure whether Wasim is actually missing.

A PTI report said Indian authorities claimed that they arrested Wasim near the border between Bangladesh and India. However, Indian dailies quoting Wasim's family members reported that Indian authorities arrested him at New Delhi airport lastWednesday.

The college principal said they filed a general diary with Airport Police Station in connection with Ashrafuzzaman Chowdhury being missing. Ashrafuzzaman is from Bianibazar of Sylhet and he went to college last on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, doctor Rashid Ahmed, assistant registrar of North East Medical College Hospital in South Surma suburb of Sylhet, was released Saturday after plainclothes law enforcers picked him up at his office Thursday afternoon.

He told reporters that some law enforcers took him to an unknown location blindfolded and interrogated him about the New Delhi blast for around 12 hours. He said they were trying to know if the four Indian medical students were involved in the blast.

He said a few foreign nationals also might have quizzed him since they were speaking English and Hindi.