A 38-year-old woman from Kollam, who was promised a job in Oman last month, is currently begging to the Indian government to rescue her and bring her back home. Since March 4, 2019, the woman, identified as Sunitha Anilkumar from Kollam, has been locked up and starved by her Arab employees and the ‘agency’ which took her to Oman, her family tells TNM.
Sunitha flew to Oman on March 4, 2019 with the help of a local agent Santosh. Within two days, her 2 daughters and son who live in Kottayam, began receiving distress calls from their mother as she was being tortured by her Arab employees. In a 5-minute long voice conversation recorded by her daughter, Sunitha can be heard wailing over the phone, begging them to bring her back somehow.
As per the phone conversation, the victim was taken to multiple houses, starved and made to do a tremendous load of house work. She was also deprived of a phone, which cut off her communication channels.
“I was taken to a house here (Oman) first. They gave me some food and made me do a lot of work. I washed and wiped 38 rooms in a a few hours. I stayed there for a day and visited the agency’s office the next day,” Sunitha says in her phone call. When asked for her location, she tells that she is is not aware of it.
After visiting the agency which brought her from Kollam, she was taken by another man to another house. Here, her phone was taken away and she could not call her family back home.
“There were some Indian workers in this house, I asked them to take me back to the agent's office and they did. But when I reached the office, I was locked up for 4 days without food or water,” Sunitha says while breaking down on the phone.
Locked up, starved and harassed for days
Sunitha was later taken to different houses to work. She has been harassed and denied basic food, water and basic facilities since, she says.
“I am being fed one slice of bread at 11:00 am and another at 11:30 pm. I don’t have basic facilities here. I can’t do this anymore,” she says.
’Victim sought help from Oman police, but was returned to agents’
Speaking to TNM, Sunitha’s daughter, 19-year-old Sreelakshmi says that he mother last contacted them on April 20. The victim’s two other children are minors, aged 17 and 15. Sreelakshmi, in her statement to TNM, says that her mother ran away and sought help from the Oman police, but returned her to the agency officials.
“She had escaped to a police station in the Liwa, Oman. But the officers there sent her back to the agency as she could not communicate her problem to them,” she says.
Liwa is a province in the Al Batinah region in Oman, where the children believe, their mother is currently held captive.
After the agents took her back, the victim told her children that she was badly beaten up.
“She was hit in the head with a beer bottle, kicked in her stomach. When she went to pee, she told us she was bleeding,” Srilakshmi recalls the phone call.
The children have since visited the Kollam Collectorate, Commissioner’s office and the local police station to file complaints and secure their mother’s release and safe passage.
A complaint was filed early in April against Santosh, the agent from Muvattupuzha, Kochi, who convinced Sunitha to go to Oman.
‘Agent demanded 1 lakh as ransom to release mother’
Santosh runs an agency known as Tharikkal Mustafa Bulls Service, which claims to be a recruiter based in Muvattupuzha. When the children rung him up recently, he demanded a ransom of Rs 1,60,000 for Sunitha’s release.
When TNM investigated the agency, no evidence of the existence such a company appeared.
“He (Santosh) made my mother book tickets for Rs 15,000 and sent her to Dubai, from where she was taken to Oman. She was only given a 1 month tourist visa, which raised suspicions,” Sreelakshmi adds.
When asked how a 1 month visa would serve the purpose if she was working, Santosh added that this was a temporary visa so that she could return home if she did not like her job.
“Now she is literally pleading to return home. But they are not sending her back. When we spoke to Santosh on call, he is demanding Rs 1,60,000 as ransom to be sent to another agency office in Tamil Nadu,” Sreelakshmi stated.
Scant help from authorities
Speaking to TNM, VP of the INTUC, advocate Kunjimon, who is helping the children said that the district Collectorate and police have been of no help to the family.
“I submitted a petition to the district collector on April 22. Instead of opening a file and asking for reports to be prepared, he forwarded it to the Kollam Commissioner of Police after a delay of 5 days,” Kunjimon stated.
Due to the absence of the Commissioner when the complaint was forwarded, the case was further delayed.
Meanwhile, the children had also visited the Muvattupuzha police station to file a complaint against Santosh. However, they say that the police took the issue lightly and refused to file a complaint.
“We were two girls and the officers were not serious. They sent us back saying they will look into the issue and try to help us. Even in the Commissioner’s office which we visited on April 22, the officers were not serious,” Sreelakshmi added.
The three children are currently staying in a rented house in Kallada, Kollam under the care of their aunt (mother’s sister). Their father passed away in a road accident a few years ago.
MEA and Indian Embassy in Oman alerted
Incumbent Kollam MP NK Premachandran has taken cognisance of the case now, says Adv Kunjimon. Complaints have been forwarded to both External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and the Indian Embassy in Oman. Responses for these complaints are now awaited.