The maid, Habibullah Arifa, allegedly slipped through the window of a second-floor apartment in Makkah on April 11 and died on the spot, Sabarullah Khan, consul general at the Sri Lanka Consulate in Jeddah, said on Saturday.

The deceased woman who came to the Kingdom on Feb. 5 had told her father the mistress of the house was harassing her all the time.

The deceased woman’s father said in his letter to the Foreign Ministry, “She spoke to me by phone, telling me of her ordeal and the mistress grabbed the phone and told me that she was not doing any work in the house.”

Based on the father’s complaint, the diplomat said the mission had called for a full-scale investigation into the death.

“We are waiting for medical and forensic reports in order to clarify the matter,” Khan said. Hamdhan Mohammed Al-Harbi, the Saudi sponsor said that the maid died when she tried to escape through the window.

Kingsley Ranawake, chairman of the Sri Lanka Foreign Employment Bureau (SLBFE) told Arab News from Colombo that his establishment which coordinates the island’s overseas workers, is currently conducting investigations into the issue of the deceased woman’s alleged forged passport.

She was in fact under the age of employment but the recruiters, in their haste to make profits, often give people false passports which misstate their ages.

“We have taken up the task with the concerned employment agent, who was instrumental in the whole operation,” he said, pointing out that if he were found guilty, he would face severe punishment.

The chairman also said that the immigration department was in the process of introducing finger prints in Sri Lankan passports in order to avoid such problems in future.

In another similar case, Rizana Nafeek, a Sri Lankan maid, allegedly murdered a Saudi baby in 2005. She is still in jail in the Kingdom. She was trafficked into the country to work as a housemaid on a passport that falsely stated she was 23 when according to her birth certificate, she was only 17. That is in violation of the Kingdom’s labor laws and also international human trafficking laws.