Indian housemaid’s case: Riyadh police rules out torture

RIYADH: The Indian housemaid whose hand was amputated had not been tortured by her employer but had sustained her injuries after falling from a third floor window while trying to escape, according to the police here.
Riyadh Police spokesman Fawaz Al-Maiman said Friday that preliminary investigations have concluded that the woman, Kasturi Munirathinam, 55, was not tortured, based on information received from the hospital where she is under treatment.
Doctors had told police officers the woman had hurt her hand during her fall, which resulted in the amputation. She is now in a stable condition, according to the doctors, he said.
“The news published on social media about the maid was false and untrue,” Al-Maiman said, adding that the police hope to continue the investigations following her discharge from the hospital. He said that citizens and residents are treated equally under the Kingdom’s Islamic law.
The Indian Foreign Ministry had earlier sought an independent inquiry into the incident.
On Friday, Anil Nautiyal, first secretary of community welfare at the Indian Embassy, told Arab News that the mission was still waiting for the medical and police report. “We have demanded a full-scale inquiry into the incident,” he said, adding that the next course of action would be determined according to these reports.
Vikas Swarup, a foreign ministry spokesman, said the Indian embassy in Riyadh had taken up the matter with the Saudi foreign office and asked for strict action.
“We have also sought an independent probe into the incident and urged that a case of attempted murder be lodged against the sponsor so that she is punished, if found guilty,” Swarup said.
Munirathinam, from Mungileri village near Katpadi in Vellore, had allegedly attempted to escape from her employer on Thursday afternoon by tying together bed sheets and some of her clothes.
According to her sponsor, she had thrown the makeshift rope out of the third floor window and then climbed out.
However, she then fell and landed on two electricity boxes, which caused severe damage to her hand, the sponsor claimed.
Munirathinam had left India for the Kingdom on July 28 to work as a housemaid for SR1,000 a month, to look after her sponsor’s 70-year-old mother, who lives alone in an apartment in Riyadh.