RIYADH, 12 June 2006 — An expatriate worker was detained for several hours and fined SR7,000 after he reported to the police that he had found his missing car in a junkyard.

“My story is stranger than fiction. The police detained me when I went to inform them a few days later that my car had now been found,” P.V. Jamal told Arab News.

Piecing together the chain of events behind the bizarre incident that began on May 26, the Indian national said he had parked his Toyota in front of his house at 10.30 p.m. The next day finding it missing he immediately lodged a complaint with the Ummul Hammam police station.

“Then after 10 days someone suggested that I might as well search for my missing vehicle in the junkyard for damaged cars at Al-Sulay near the industrial estate. I decided to take a chance and started looking for my vehicle. To my surprise I found my car there but damaged,” said Jamal.

He said when he went to the police station to inform them that he had found his car he was ordered to pay SR15,000 to the owner of the car hit by his vehicle in an accident on the night of May 28.

“I protested saying that I had reported my car missing on May 27,” he said.

Jamal declined to pay the amount on the ground that he was not involved in the accident, but the police would not accept his explanation. Nor did they pay any attention to the fact that he had insurance cover.

“I was detained for three hours and was released only after the intervention of a Saudi friend, Raja Al-Anzi,” he said.

Al-Anzi, who accompanied Jamal to the Arab News office yesterday, said he tracked the owner of the damaged vehicle to find out if he could recognize him as the person who had hit his car. “He told us that he doesn’t remember anything.” Finally, the police settled for SR7,000 and released the vehicle.

Jamal said the theft and subsequent recovery of his vehicle pose some unanswered questions. He said the car thief must have vanished from the scene of the accident, but the police could get the owner’s details from the traffic department’s data bank.

“Why didn’t they contact the car owner about the accident? Don’t they realize the fact that the person who had complained about the missing car was the same person now being implicated in the car accident? Why didn’t they inform me that my missing car had been found damaged and was at the Sulay junkyard? Why did the police finally settle for SR7,000 when they were initially insisting on SR15,000?” Jamal said.

Jamal is now going to take up the case with the Saudi Society for Human Rights to seek justice.