JEDDAH: Illegal Indian expatriates wanting to be deported created an unruly scene at the Consulate General of India for more than an hour when about 100 of them gathered on Sunday. According to eyewitnesses, consulate officials invited their representatives to be sent in for discussion, but all of them demanded audience with consular officials to be deported immediately. The officials warned the illegal expatriates to conduct themselves lawfully and abide by the law of the land.
A consulate source said the group started gathering from 10 a.m. and tried to raise slogans, but soon they were rounded up by the police and taken to Tarhil, the deportation center in Sharafiyah. The group included three women.
“The women have been sent to a safe place by the consulate pending their deportation,” the source added.
Inquiries show that some expatriates of different nationalities posing as “agents” have been promising the prospective deportees to arrange for their passage home through the deportation center for a “fee” of about SR300.
“But such promises are never kept and they are never deported even with or without the payment,” a member of the group said. “That’s why they take recourse to measures like seeking the consulate’s intervention,” he added.
According to reports, the consulate has been regularly receiving groups of expatriates, many of them runaways or overstayers, and they are all directed to the deportation center. They usually gather under the Sharafiyah Bridge to get arrested and taken to the deportation center, failing which they march toward the consulate.
