Hyderabad, July 29: A woman who was seriously injured while escaping her sponsor in Saudi Arabia has managed to return to India with great difficulty.
Ms Shabana Begum from Hyderabad, who suffered injuries to her spinal cord, complained that she was not provided any help from the Indian Embassy authorities.
Ms Shabana, who could not sit properly due to her recent operation in Saudi Arabia, also had to spend an agonising 12 hours at the Dubai Airport.
“While I was undergoing extreme torture from the wife of my sponsor, I thought it could not get any worse. But that was before this ordeal. I went through extreme pain and despair,” she said.
“Though high officials from the Indian embassy and Consulate General of India visited me after seeing the news in local newspapers, I didn’t get any help from them. At last, I had to beg my sponsor to send me home. He bought me a ticket from Abha via Dubai to Hyderabad. In Dubai airport I had to suffer a lot, I had to stay there for almost 12 hours and I was not provided even water,” she added.
Desperately in need of money, the widow had gone to Saudi Arabia eight months ago to work as a maid for a couple in the city of Abha, Saudi Arabia.
Things started going downhill as the wife of her sponsor started torturing her.
During her eight months of work, she was not paid the promised salary and was beaten and abused. She managed to escape and complained to the local police who warned her sponsor’s wife. Angered with this, her employer then locked her up. Ms Shabana received her injuries when she fell while trying to escape.
After two months of treatment at Azeer Hospital she was discharged. As she wanted to return to India, she initially called the Indian Embassy authorities as they had asked her to, but they did not help. She finally begged her sponsor to buy her a ticket to Hyderabad.
Ms Shabana now stays at Phool Bagh in the old city in her sister’s house with her five-year-old daughter and three-year-old son.
-Agencies