Shimla, Aug 10 : Three minor students of one of the oldest premier boys boarding schools for boys in Asia, the Bishop Cotton School in Shimla, founded in 1859, have gone missing under mysterious circumstances while on a weekly day out in the Himachal Pradesh capital, police said on Sunday.

One of the students, who belongs to Mohali, is related to a minister in Punjab, while another is from a prominent business family of Karnal in Haryana, and the third one is from the state's Kullu.

The three students of Class 6 had gone to Mall Road for shopping on an outing on Saturday. The other students who had gone with them returned, but the three's whereabouts are still unknown, said the police.

Senior Superintendent of Police Sanjeev Gandhi told the media here that police teams have been formed to search for the children. Delhi and Haryana Police have also been contacted to trace their whereabouts. He said a case has been registered.

With the police launching a search operation to find them out, vehicles going towards Shoghi, the entry and exit points of the state capital on the Shimla-Chandigarh national highway, are being searched.

It is believed that the children have gone somewhere without informing anyone. The police have not ruled out the possibility of their kidnapping.

Police investigations showed that the children were seen in different localities of the city in CCTV footage during the outing, particularly on Mall Road, but disappeared after some time.

BCS is an elite boarding school in the country, and children from India and abroad come here to study.

Every week, the children go on an outing on Saturday. Except for the three students, all other children returned to the school on time.

The school management has lodged a complaint with the police about the three missing children. Their disappearance has raised safety concerns about the students in the boarding school.

/IANS