For Uttan resident Rovena D’souza, 51, a job in Saudi Arabia seemed like a great opportunity to add to the family income. She had already worked abroad, in Israel, and her children are grown up: her daughter is married and her son is an office manager. So in March, when an agent in Mira Road, Javed Siddiqui, offered her a job as nanny for a Riyadh family’s school-going children for Rs 23,000 a month, she accepted.
But, according to her husband of 25 years, Veldin D’souza, 50, a tour guide operator, once she arrived in Saudi Arabia, she found that she was expected to do many other jobs in the house. Her passport and mobile phone, he says, was taken from her from employer, and she is being denied food and water and is forced to stay in cramped quarters. He says his wife told him all this when she managed to call him from the phone of a local woman.
When the panicked husband called the employment agent, he says that Siddiqui demanded Rs. 1.6 lakh to have Ms. D’souza allowed to leave and return to India.
Mr. D’souza, enraged, made a complaint at the Uttan Coastal police station. He says that he has information now that Siddiqui has similarly duped other women. He says that his wife had been introduced to Siddiqui by Rosemary and Stanley Rodrigues, a couple she had met in the fish market. The Uttan police say that Mr. Rodrigues is absconding, and Ms. Rodrigues, when questioned, said she had no idea where he was.
The police registered a case under Section 507 (criminal intimidation) against Siddiqui, but have not arrested him. “We are investigating further,” an official said. When asked why no FIR has been registered, the official said, “We will do so, once the victim returns home from Saudi Arabia,” and refused to comment further.
Mr. D’souza says that in April he petitioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj asking for the intervention, but that effort has borne no fruit.
“I just want my wife back home and nothing else,” Mr. D’souza said.
The writer is a freelance journalist
