HYDERABAD: The family of a 27-year-old woman, Nasreen Fatima, has asked for an investigation into her suspicious death in
Saudi Arabia. Fatima, of Al Ain colony, Shaheenagar, was working as a housemaid with a family in Riyadh. Her kafeel (employer) called her relatives on Sunday to inform them that she had died.
In a letter to union external affairs minister
Sushma Swaraj, Ghousia Begum said her daughter-in-law Nasreen Fatima had gone to Riyadh in search of a job as the family was having financial problems after her husband Syed Feroze met with an accident.
Through a local agent, who is also a resident of Shaheenagar, and a travel agency in Mumbai, she travelled to Riyadh on August 7, 2017. There, she was employed as a maid in the house of one Abdullah.
“She was made to work 15 hours a day and not paid her salary for the last 12 months. She wanted to return to India but was not being allowed to do so,” Ghousia Begum said.
She added that Nasreen last spoke to them on May 14 and was in tears, asking to be brought back to India. In the letter to
Swaraj, Ghousia Begum provided the phone number on which she was online till late in the night on May 17. “We received a phone call today from her kafeel saying she had died and her body had been shifted to a hospital,” Ghousia Begum said. She urged officials to ask the Indian Embassy in Riyadh to inquire into the cause of Nasreen’s death and to help her bring back the body to India.
The Indian Embassy in Riyadh, responding to social worker Amjed Ullah Khan’s tweet about the death, said, “The embassy is in contact with the sponsor and kin in India for expediting formalities for dispatch of the body.”