Forty-five-year-old Zainab Abdul Khader came to Saudi Arabia five months ago and has been working as a hygiene worker with a cleaning and maintenance company that had been sub-contracted by a hospital in Sakaka, around 1,200 km from Riyadh.
Zainab said she received severe injuries to her lower abdomen and was admitted to the hospital where she worked.
She told Arab News that she was assaulted on April 28 because she refused to work as a part-time housemaid at a residence after her supervisor asked her to. She was admitted to the hospital’s Emergency Department on Saturday after she complained of severe pains and difficulty in passing urine.
She told a family friends what had happened. The friend, who works around 450 km away from Sakaka in Arar, then contacted the Federation of Kerala Associations in Saudi Arabia (FOKASA).
FOKASA representative Rafi Pangodu said he lodged a police complaint and also spoke to the worker's sponsor who promised to take action against the supervisor, an Arab expatriate, but worse was to come.
He said that when the supervisor found out about the complaint against him, he rushed to the hospital, pulled Zainab out of the Emergency Department and took her to her accommodation where he again beat her up. He also took away her mobile phone.
“We were however able to contact her through a co-worker’s mobile phone at her accommodation," he told Arab News.
Zainab hails from Alappuzha where her husband P.S. Abdul Khader currently lives with their two sons. The Indian Embassy has been informed of the case, FOKASA President R. Muraleedharan told Arab News.
FOKASA has urged the embassy to save Zainab’s life by freeing her from the supervisor and called on local authorities to take action against him. A petition has also been submitted to the Kerala government department dealing with non-resident Indians, according to Muraleedharan.
"The supervisor is indirectly getting full support from the sponsor according to information FOKASA gathered by talking to Zainab and her friends and family,” he told Arab News.
“The supervisor enjoys so much clout that he was able to drag Zainab from the hospital's emergency room to beat her up again and has now locked her up without food.”
He confirmed that an Indian Embassy official told FOKASA an official complaint was being lodged with Al-Jouf police.
“I have complained verbally to the Indian Embassy about an ongoing illegal practice where cleaning workers, after finishing the duty they were signed up for, are forced to do domestic work at residences in which three-quarters of the revenue is pocketed by the supervisor and workers are paid a nominal amount,” Muraleedharan added.
“In Zainab's case, she refused to do work other than what she was officially signed up to do. This kind of illegal practice is going on in a lot of places. The workers are forced to do domestic work."
He claimed that the supervisor also acted as the company’s driver for the workers.
— With input from
Arjuwan Lakkdawala
