Hyderabad: 29-year-old, Asra, from Bazarghat of Hyderabad has been held captive by her kafil (employer) in Saudi Arabia. She is also being sexually harassed.
According to a report published in Times of India, Asra narrated her plight in a video in which she says that her employer’s brother-in-law was sexually harassing her despite her attempts to ward him off. She is quoted to have said in the video “He tries to approach me on some pretext or the other. Every time he comes to me I run away from him. I am being sexually harassed”. She is also shifted from one place to another.
Her sister Asima and her brother have made an appeal to union external affairs minister to rescue her. Her sister too used a video to convey her appeal in which she said ‘Please rescue my sister who is in deep trouble. This is an emergency’.
Asra has two children who are unable to talk to her on phone and are missing her.
Asra went to Saudi, via Dubai on November 12, 2016, to work as housemaid through an agent, Fatima from Hyderabad. She was told that she needed to take care of the kafil’s house and his mother. Her kafil, Ayed Abdul Rahman Bashar Al Shamri, lives in Ha’il region near Riyadh, KSA. However, she was shifted her to kafil’s sister’s house where Asra was to take care of his mother. There the sister’s husband started sexually harassing her and she was also beaten up.
According to Asra she ran to the police station to lodge a complaint. But the police called her employer and she was again taken back to the same house. She wished her desire to come out of this hell and appealed for her rescue.
MBT leader Amjedullah Khan has written a letter to external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj on Saturday in this connection and urged that Asra be rescued.