DHADING: A local school of Dhading district has been forced to shut indefinitely after dozens of students there started showing symptoms of mass hysteria one after another.

A teacher of the Piplatar-based Mahakali Secondary School, Janak Acharya, said that students of Grade IV to X have recently started to scream, become restless and faint consequently.

The school has been shut since Friday after it witnessed increasing number of students with the similar symptoms.

The number was limited to just two to three at first, but lately around 15-20 students started fainting on a regular basis, the teacher said.

The doctors they consulted said they had not been able to identify the problem.

The school had witnessed the similar problems last year as well.

Considering possibilities of trauma among the children, the school had sought psychological conselling to solve the problem. Yet no improvement was seen in the strange phenomena, the school added.