The authorities arrested the three maids and the two men in a house in Riyadh, where the women were sheltered illegally. The officials said the agents kept the runaway maids in the house to send them to work in other households.

The police acted on a tip-off given by a Saudi employer whose maid had run away.

The nationality of the arrested maids and the men were not revealed. However, most of the maids working in the Kingdom come from countries such as Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Nepal and in limited numbers from India and some African countries.

Most of the Asian women come to the Kingdom for a stipulated salary ranging from SR500 to SR800 per month. The middlemen or their agents, who get an opportunity to contact these maids in Saudi homes, allure them with promises of a threefold increase in their monthly salaries.

To get a foreign domestic aide into the Kingdom, a Saudi sponsor spends more than SR12,000, which includes the visa fees, airfare and the agent's fees in maid-exporting countries. The employer loses all his money when the maid runs away.

Reacting to the arrest on Wednesday, Nepalese Ambassador Udaya Raj Pandey commended the services of the security authorities that have brought these culprits to book.

“The unscrupulous agents, who pretend to be good Samaritans, are mainly responsible for this racket, which pulls out the innocent maids from Saudi homes promising better perks,” Pandey said. 

Citing a recent such case, the envoy said, the local agent had housed a Nepalese maid, Rani, in a house for months for prospective placement in another house. “The agent gets an attractive commission from the would-be sponsor for the illegal transfer of workplaces,” the ambassador said.

The envoy recalled that Rani was rescued with the help of the officials from the governorate and the police.

The envoy said an estimated 70,000 Nepalese housemaids live in the Kingdom, and most of them had come through the hands of these human traffickers through India.

“I am getting daily two to three runaway maids, who had come here through some unscrupulous agents back home. There are around 10 runaway maidservants currently sheltered under the mission's custody. One of the sheltered maids is an Indian woman from Mumbai. We have to send her back to Nepal, since she holds a Nepalese passport,” the ambassador said.

A senior diplomat from the Sri Lankan embassy here said that the modus operandi is common among the recruiting agents that bring the housemaids to the Kingdom.

“They swap these servants among the sponsors according to the whims and fancies of the local sponsor,” he noted.

However, there are sporadic incidents of runaway maids who are waylaid by such unscrupulous agents and are sent to their pre-arranged workplaces for higher salaries and attractive commissions for their pockets.

The official said the Sri Lankan mission in Riyadh gets an average of 10 runaway maids a day who seek refuge at the embassy. Currently, he said, the mission has around 200 maidservants awaiting repatriation.