After the death of a 25-year old Hyderabadi maid Asima Khatoon in Saudi Arabia due to alleged torture of her employer, many more families in the city were coming forward with the complaints of torture and harassment in Saudi Arabia and demand that their women should be brought back to India.
While one maid Husna Begum, resident of Hasan Nagar in Hyderabad has sent two videos with her tale of woes and appeal to the Center and the State Government for help, families of three other women have lodged a complaint with the city police alleging torture by their employer in Saudi Arabia.
Husna Begum's father Mohammed Yousuf told the media in Hyderabad that in December 2015 she had gone to Saudi Arabia on the promised job of dress designer in King Fahad hospital in Dammam. “But on landing there, her employer Abu Saif Haris took her to Haffar Al Batin, 480 kms away from Dammam and forced her to work as a house maid promising that she will get the promised job later”.
But when after some time the lady refused to work has a house maid, her employer started harassing and torturing her. “She was not being allowed to go out of the compound and even use a phone to talk to her family in India”, Yousuf said.
Husna Begum narrated the same story in two video messages she somehow managed to send to Hyderabad. A city political leader Amjadullah Khan Khalid on the basis of the video messages of the lady wrote a letter to the External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and the Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao seeking directions to the Indian Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Ahmad Javeed and the police authorities to intervene and get the lady released from illegal custody and also to take action against the travel agents in Hyderabad and Mumabi who cheated her.
After the story of Husna Begum came to light, families of three other women Shameem, Anees Fatima and Sameena Fatima, residents of Malakpet in Hyderabad approached the Chadarghat police station alleging that they were being tortured by their employers in Saudi Arabia
They told the police that a local agent Muskan had sent the three ladies to Saudi Arabia as house maids and Sultan Bin Nazeer Bin Salesh Al Ammar was their employer.
The families told the police that they were neither paid salaries nor were being allowed to go out or contact the Indian embassy officials.
When they approached the local agent Muskan about their safety, she demanded Rs2 lakh from each to bring them back to Hyderabad, the families told the police.
Chadarghat police has booked a case and was looking in to the matter, officials said.
Meanwhile the Minister for NRIs welfare in Andhra Pradesh Palle Raghunatha Reddy has also written a letter to Sushma Swaraj complaining that the women domestic workers from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana were being sold like “products in retail shop”.
He urged Ms Swaraj to intervene and extend help to these women to come back home. He said that a large number of such women were languishing in Gulf States after attempting to flee their abusive employers or overstaying their visas.
"Necessary steps should be initiated to bring them to their native places safely by providing free travel and necessary visa documents at the earliest possible", he said in the letter sent a week ago.
"Women are being sold to the tune of Rs4 lakh in Saudi Arabia and between Rs1 lakh to Rs2 lakh in Bahrain, UAE and Kuwait", the Minister said in the letter. He also revealed that 25 women jailed in Gulf States had sought the help of the Government recently.