The UN refugee agency said it had written to the Nepalese government about the incident in early June, details of which were published in a report by the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT).

Two of the refugees -- a Buddhist monk and a young woman -- are now in jail in Tibet after they were detained in western Nepal and taken by helicopter to the border, where they were met by Chinese security forces, the ICT said.

Theirs is the first such case to be reported since 2003, when 18 Tibetans, some of them children, were detained by Nepalese police and sent back to China in a move that sparked international condemnation.

"Three Tibetans were forcefully returned to China from Nepal in early June 2010. It is a very serious issue and we are extremely concerned," Nini Gurung, spokeswoman for the UN refugee agency in Kathmandu, told AFP by email.

Thousands of Tibetans used to make the difficult and dangerous journey to Nepal every year, fleeing political and religious repression in China.

They have traditionally been given safe passage through Nepal under an informal agreement between the government and the UN refugee agency put in place in 1989, when Nepal stopped giving them refugee status.

They are then given UN assistance to travel on to India, where the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama lives in exile.

But their numbers have fallen sharply since March 2008 riots in Tibet led China to strengthen border security and increase pressure on authorities in Nepal to stem the flow of refugees.

"Nepal is duty-bound under its own agreement with the UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees) to ensure the safe transit of Tibetan refugees through its territory," said ICT president Mary Beth Markey.

"We urge the Nepal government and the UNHCR to work together to investigate this incident, including China's extra-territorial role, and to adopt remedies that prevent future occurrences of refoulement (forced return) from Nepal."

A spokesman for the home ministry in Nepal declined to comment, saying he had no information about any such incident, which involved two Tibetan monks living in a monastery near the border and a 22-year-old woman.

China is a major donor to Nepal, and news of the forced repatriations followed reports of a new aid package designed to help its impoverished neighbour improve border security.

The governments of the two countries will set up a joint mechanism to help share intelligence on "anti-China activities" in Nepal, the Kathmandu Post daily reported, following a meeting of security officials in Kathmandu.

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