LALITPUR: A schoolboy who went missing while hiking around Phulchoki hill has not been found yet even after a week.

17-year-old John Tamang, who studies at Ajaya Shiksha Sadan in Thasikhel, has gone missing since Thursday, January 25.

Spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police Range, Lalitpur, Deputy Superintendent Narendra Chand said all the three security bodies — Nepal Police, the Armed Police Force and Nepal Army — have been searching for the missing boy.

The parents, family members and relatives of Tamang, and the Private and Boarding Schools Organisation of Nepal (PABSON) as well as parents/guardians' associations had searched for the missing boy in the villages around Godavari but in vain.

School principal Durga Bahadur Oli had taken 11 students including Tamang for hiking in Phulchoki on Thursday. Oli informed Tamang's parents after he was not found till evening that day.

According to Bharat Rai, one of Tamang's relatives, Oli had informed John's parents that he had been bothering him and that he would return home the next day. "It is not clear why the school principal said that John would come home the next day," Rai said. The family members of the boy have blamed John's missing on the principal's negligence and have demanded action against him.

"On one hand, he (the principal) has made the students walk for 24 kilometres while on the other hand he has not told us how the incident happened," Rai said. Tamang's relatives have said that the principal and the other students who went hiking together with him have different versions of the incident. Tamang's family has been demanding to find the status of the missing schoolboy.

Number of schools in and around Kathmandu had gone on excursions to witness and play in the snow at Phulchoki hill.