Indian maid suffering from mental disturbances: Saudi police

Riyadh: A 55-year-old Indian domestic help, who had her right hand severed in Saudi Arabia, was suffering from "mental disturbances" and tried to flee her sponsor's house, police said.

Kasturi Munirathinam, who hails from Vellore in Tamil Nadu, is in a stable condition after undergoing a series of surgeries and will soon leave the hospital.

The family of Munirathinam, working as a domestic help in Saudi Arabia, had alleged that her right hand was chopped off by her employer when she tried to escape harassment and torture, but Saudi police said it was amputated as a result of her fall from a residential building during her bid to escape.

"Riyadh's Al-Sahafa police had received information from a local hospital about admitting a domestic help in its emergency section, saying that the woman's arm was severed following a fall," said Fawaz Al-Maimaan, spokesman of Riyadh police.

"The domestic help, who arrived in the Kingdom nearly two months ago, was suffering from mental disturbances and therefore tried to flee the sponsor's house," Al-Maimaan was quoted as saying by the Saudi Gazette on Friday.

He added that the case file of the maid was handed over to the branch of the Bureau of Investigation and Public Prosecution and rejected reports in various media outlets about the maid.

"All people in the Kingdom are equal and they will get all their rights guaranteed by the law based on the Islamic Shariah," he said.

According to Al-Maimaan, the maid made a rope ladder out of ragged pieces of cloth in order to escape out of the window of the sponsor's apartment on the third floor of the building. However, she lost balance and fell down, hitting on the edge of an electricity generator located on the lower part of the house that resulted in severing her arm on the scene itself.

This was testified by eye witnesses, including her compatriots, the report added. When the sponsor heard about the incident, he rushed to the scene and took her to hospital. India has recorded its strongest protest and demanded a full-scale inquiry into the incident.