Confirming the incident, an official from the Sri Lankan Embassy said that for some reason these maids did not want to go home.
“They had convinced the Saudi authorities they were Indians and had obtained emergency certificates issued by the Indian mission,” the official said.
The women spoke Tamil, a language of Sri Lanka and the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
The three maids, identified as Shereen Mohammadu Noor, Farida Raj and Mangal Eshwary, had run away from their homes in Dammam and were arrested following complaints made by their respective sponsors.
According to sources, these maids had told the government officials that they were from southern India.
Accordingly, the authorities had referred them to the Indian Embassy officials for the issue of necessary travel documents to go to India. They reportedly could not convince Mumbai immigration officials that they were originally from India.
“We go by the language they speak and other details of their whereabouts in India,” an official said, adding that the mission may have to develop a more effective mechanism to track such fraud cases.
