Five HIV-positive children were turned away from their classrooms after their school defied a government order to re-admit them.

The pupils, aged between 5 and 11, were denied entry to the private school in Kerala state when other parents threatened to withdraw their children.

“The parents said they don’t want their children to mingle with those HIV-positive children,” said Elsamma Mani, headmistress of the Mar Dionysius Lower Primary School in Kottayam district.

The incident highlights the widespread ignorance and fear surrounding HIV/Aids in India, which the United Nations says has the world’s highest case-load with an estimated 5.7 million people infected.

The Government says that the number is lower and that it has raised awareness by spending $2 billion (£1 billion) on measures including setting up free test centres and distributing free condoms.

Critics say that India is dragging its feet and caution that its Aids epidemic could reach African levels if the Government does not do more.

In the past few weeks alone there have been media reports of an Aids patient left to die on a street outside a hospital and of an HIV-positive woman beaten to death by her inlaws.

The children in Kerala are from the Asha Kiran orphanage, where they have been receiving private tuition for the past six months. The saga began when the orphanage invited local officials and media to cover a party marking its first anniversary last December.

After seeing the coverage, parents and teachers protested that the HIV-positive children, who they had thought were simply orphans, could infect others at the school by coming into contact with them.

“Despite the programmes we have been running, the parents are still under the impression that the disease spreads like this,” Jacob Kurian, who helps to run the orphanage, said. “We did not allow the children to go back because we knew they felt this way. Otherwise people might have thrown stones at them or something.”

Mr Kurian said that the children would not take their case to court for fear of further antagonising the local community.

A spokeswoman for UNAids, the United Nations Aids agency, suggested that the issue should be resolved through the courts and urged local political leaders to intervene.

“This is a manifestation of a disease, which is stigmatisation of people living with HIV,” she said. “It is a problem all over the world but more so in India where sex is a taboo subject.”

M. A. Baby, the education minister of Kerala, and Oommen Chandy, the local opposition leader and former chief minister, have intervened on behalf of the children to no avail so far.

Deadly advance

— 100,000 condom machines will be installed by end of the year

— 1 in 200 people in India have HIV

— 7% given antiretroviral treatment

— 270,000 to 680,00 people die of Aids-related deaths annually

Sources: Unaids; Avert

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