A woman has urged the Collector to arrange for the repatriation of her husband who had gone to Saudi Arabia for employment and incarcerated in the prison at Dammam for more than a year after implicated in a case.

Waging a lone battle for nearly a year to secure the release of her husband, P Saritha (30), mother of three young daughters, including a differently abled child, presented a petition to Collector S. Natarajan here on Wednesday for the second time this year and urged him to take up the issue with the State government and provide succour to her.

A native of Kalathavur village, Saritha said her husband P. Palanikumar (35), a Class X dropout, was working as a mason before he went to Saudi Arabia through an agent in Chennai after paying him Rs. 50,000 in October 2014.

The employer not only refused to return his passport but filed a false complaint that he had stolen 20,000 Riyals from the company. Acting on the complaint, the Saudi police had arrested and imprisoned him in a Dammam jail in March last year.

Since then she had been fighting to secure the release of her husband, she said.

Her husband was the sole breadwinner of the family and after he was jailed, she was going for farm work and taking up odd jobs to take care of her three daughters, she said.

After she presented a petition to the Collector in March this year, the Collector, in his letter dated March 16, 2016, drew the attention of Principal Secretary/Commissioner, Commissionerate of Rehabilitation and Welfare of Non-resident Tamils at Chepauk in Chennai. But there had been no response till now, she said.

Mr. Natarajan assured to take up the issue with the State government again and do the needful when the woman met him on Wednesday with her children and family members.

Mr. Palanikumar spoke to her couple of days ago and said he would not come alive if she could not secure his release at the earliest, she also said.

He was given one roti in the morning and one in the night, he had told her.

Source: thehindu.com