Kolkata : An automobile engineer from Bengal has been made a slave and is being subjected to sexual and physical abuse by his Saudi employer in Riyadh for the past seven months.
Jayanta Biswas, a 23-year-old engineer from Mamudpur at Naihati in North 24 Parganas district, had sky high dreams when he landed in Riyadh on May 15, after paying Rs 5.35 lakh to three Delhi-based agents. The money was generated from selling off ancestral agricultural land. However, soon he found that the promise of Rs 30,000 monthly salary was a lie. He, along with other youth from Bangladesh and India were confined in a room in the house of Saudi national Naeef Bookme.
“He used to call me and cry that he and the other boys were beaten up regularly by their employer and no food was being given to them. On further enquiry, he revealed that he was sexually abused regularly,” Jayanta’s elder sister Ria Biswas, 38, told Express.
Jayanta had tried to escape confinement in August and turned up at the Indian Embassy but was denied any help there. In the meantime, after Naeef found that Jayanta was missing, he charged him with theft of 10,000 riyals and a police case was filed. Jayanta was arrested on August 9 and jailed till October-end.
After his release, Jayanta again went to the Embassy, where this time he was taken seriously and asked to bring a No Objection Certificate (NOC) from his employer to return to India. After his return to his employer’s house, he was again allegedly tortured by Naeef.
“His employer is continuously threatening him of death and demanding an additional 3,500 riyals to let him go to India. We are scared as Saudis have a bad reputation of cutting off hands, limbs or ears,” said Ria.
Jayanta’s brother Uttam Biswas is tweeting the External Affairs Ministry and Union External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj seeking her help. Other relatives have written letters to Sushma, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and website madad.com, launched for Indians stuck abroad.
“If we do not get any response from the government within two days, residents of our locality will launch an agitation demanding the return of my brother,” added Ria.
After securing an engineering degree from a polytechnic college in Raiganj in North Dinajpur district in 2014, Jayanta worked for six months at a firm in Dehradun, when he was introduced by a friend to agent Muneer Ahmed of Al Hamid manpower consultancy and two other agents – H M Sadiq and Tabrez Alam in Delhi.
Source : The New Indian Express
