A nine-year-old boy was accidentally locked up in his classroom in Orissa’s Kendrapada district for about six hours after the school closed, his parents said on Sunday. He was rescued when his parents and neighbours broke open the classroom door at night.

Susanta Mandal, a Class 3 student of Rajapatna Primary School in a village in Kendrapada, around 150 km from here, did not return from school on Thursday afternoon.“We searched for him everywhere but could not find him,” his father Ramachandra Mandal said.

“The villagers heard him crying from inside the classroom in the night and informed us. We broke open the door and rescued him,” he said.

“I felt sleepy and took a nap before all the students left the school, after classes were over,” the boy said.

Parents of students and villager staged a protest outside the school on Friday. They locked the school gate, demanding immediate transfer of the school headmaster. The matter was resolved after the headmaster tendered an apology.