How One Punjabi Girl’s Dreams Ended in an Arabian Nightmare

Rina Rani’s tale of being tortured and enslaved by employers in the Gulf is not an isolated incident in Punjab.

(Photo: iStock/Altered by The Quint)

She turned 38 on 10 October. The same day, her tale of torture became a viral sensation. But this is not the script Rina Rani, a mother of two from Tanda in Hoshiarpur district, had written for herself when she left Punjab on 24 October last year for Dubai with the promise of a good salary as a housemaid. ‘Good’, in this case, would mean Rs 25,000 a month. It would prove a price too high.

Like many others, she was taken from Dubai to Saudi Arabia. And, like many others, she was made to work in the house of a local family for half the salary promised.

Duped in the Name of Job

This is the fate of hundreds of such women not only from India, but also Pakistan and Philippines, who end up as slaves in the Saudi kingdom. Agents here charge up to Rs 50,000 but really make the moolah from those looking for such slaves in the Gulf.

The agents function through dozens of sub-agents and often remain faceless in the absence of strict policing. And now there are even groups offering to get these women back from their hell at a price.

Rina was not expecting to be part of that vicious cycle. She told her mother that her “owner” family has a matriarch, her son, daughter-in-law and six children. “She was initially given the duties to take care of two of the kids,” says Chand Rani, Rina’s mother in Boparai village near Goraya town. It seemed a good deal since the agent in Hoshiarpur had “not taken much money”, says Chand Rani.

Also Read: Indian Woman Duped Into Becoming a Sex Slave in Saudi Arabia

But things took a turn when Rina sought to visit us.

Chand Rani, Rina’s mother

That was six months ago.

Tortured by Employers When Requested for Leave

Rina was missing her family. She was the major earning hand after her husband returned from Dubai upon suffering a hip injury at a construction site four years ago, says Chand. Her two children – son, 18, and daughter, 17 – studied till Class 10 like her, and now earn daily wages.

Rina’s father Mahinder Kumar sells fruit-chat on a cart and earns about Rs 200 a day, while her mother gets Rs 100 a day working as a peon at a motorcycle showroom in the adjoining town of Goraya. Their house is two rooms, one of which is no longer safe to enter. From this social milieu, Rina was not the only one in the Gulf. Her brother works as a mason in Dubai.

Mahinder Kumar, Rina Rani’s father returning from work as a snack vendor at their village Boparai adjoining Goraya. (Photo: Harish C/ The Quint)

When she told her employers she wanted to go to India to get her mother operated upon for a leg ailment, they felt she wanted to escape, and her problems turned into torture.

Fortunately for her, in the city of Dawadmi where she worked, two young men from Boparai were in touch with her. She first sent the video talking about her ordeal to one of them. “She had seen a similar video by a woman from Hoshiarpur who too had appealed to (AAP MP) Bhagwant Mann and eventually returned. That’s why she appealed to him,” says Sukhwinder Singh, a local courier business owner who is also a volunteer of the AAP.

Also Read: Woman Fights to Bring Her Husband’s Body Back from Saudi Arabia

Emotional Appeal in Video

In the video, she is weeping and addressing Mann. “I am stuck here,” she says repeatedly among other things.

The mother says:

God knows how she even made the video. She had called me three days before that and told me they were beating her. Then someone snatched her phone from her and the line broke. That’s when I first got to know of her problems.

Sukhwinder explains:

She was brave enough to shoot the video on her employer’s phone and then sent it to Sonu, one of our village youth there, who knew me since he used to run a tailor’s shop next to mine.

She also sent it to her sister-in-law’s phone, and she showed it to the mother.

By that time, Sukhwinder had put it up on Facebook and shared it in WhatsApp groups where it went viral. Bhagwant put it up on his social media handles too. Sukhwinder says he got calls and FB friend requests from several others who have faced such ordeals. TV channels picked up the story as foreign minister Sushma Swaraj tweeted to the embassy in Saudi Arabia to help her in response.

Also Read: Starved, Denied Water: Hyderabad Woman’s Nightmare in Saudi Arabia

Joblessness Turning into a Nightmare

Meanwhile, some local religious leaders approached Chand. “They wanted to make a Facebook Live video with her to pretend they helped her and make money in donations,” alleges Sukhwinder.

This is a new scam in the Doaba region where such cases are aplenty. I want to tell people that once the government has taken up the matter, don’t fall for these promises.

Sukhwinder Singh, AAP Volunteer

Rina has since been brought to the deportation cell or hostel of the embassy, says Sukhwinder. Bhagwant Mann, when contacted, appears confident that she will return in a week or so:

Documentation for her deportation is going on.

He underlines how this is a growing problem:

Imagine that not only Saudi Arabia but even Iraq and Syria are attracting Punjabis. Is Punjab worse than these war-torn countries? We should ask this question.

Bhagwant Mann, Lok Sabha MP, Sangrur

He says he has 15 passport copies more from Punjab alone of similar cases.

This has become one of my primary duties as MP now.

Bhagwant Mann, Lok Sabha MP, Sangrur

She called us from the hostel but hardly talked for 30 seconds. There are 40 others like her there, she told me. We are relieved she’s out of that house, but now waiting to see her.

Chand Rani, Rina’s mother

She’s been told it can take up to 20 days. “There’s purportedly some mismatch in her narrations of exactly how it happened,” Sukhwinder says, “She was taken to Dubai on a tourist visa and then sent illegally to Saudi. There’s bound to be some fear and confusion.”

Chand cuts in, “I wish there were jobs here or a little more money even in our small jobs. She won’t have had to go at all.”

There, the police too take the side of the locals, of course. She had managed to hitch rides and get to the cops, but they too sent her back to her employers forcibly. They even beat her up.

Chand Rani, Rina’s mother

Out of her ordeal, will she return to the Gulf like some others even after suffering bad experiences? Sukhwinder tells us of “another woman from Hoshiarpur who has now gone to Dubai”.

“I will not let Rina do that,” says Chand.

“To hell with Saudi!” Rina’s father Mahinder says as we meet him on the street while returning from the house. He is tired. “I just wish we were not so poor. But only God can decide that,” he walks away.

Also Read: Sushma Swaraj Responds to Sikh Man’s SOS Tweet From Saudi Arabia

(The author is a Chandigarh-based journalist.)