SANGHAR, March 31: Five bandits late Sunday night kidnapped 10 farmers late Sunday night near the Devo village in the jurisdiction of the Tando Adam police station, which is some 40 kilometres away from here, eyewitnesses and police said on Monday.

The heavily armed bandits kidnapped peasants, who were busy threshing wheat, after storming the farm of Jumo Bhano.

Peasants — identified as Jumo Bhano, Rasool Bakhsh, Ramzan, Ayaz, Babi, Maula Bakhsh, Nasrullah, Usman, Mumtaz and Razzaq — were blindfolded, manhandled and taken towards the Bakhsho Nizamani village.

A large number of local residents later accompanied the police from the Tando Adam and other police stations to pursue the bandits.

The bandits are learnt to have released the villagers with a message for the local landlords to arrange Rs500,000 on behalf of each of the kidnapped villager.

According to a number of people contacted by this correspondent, the same gang of bandits had arrived in the village early Sunday morning and had asked the villagers to provide them some food and other supplies. The villagers had declined to entertain them.

The infuriated bandits, they said, had waited all day long in a nearby jungle. They stormed the village some time after sunset.

Villagers said that they were confronted with a dilemma; on the one hand if they do not provide the bandits food and other supplies, they incur their wrath, and if they provided them with food and other such things, police accused them of sheltering the bandits.

Although, they said, the gang could not be identified but its members had attacked the village in the name of the Jaffar Keerio gang.