India seeks Saudi help in alleged Diplomatic rape investigation
Two Nepali women, aged 30 and 50 working as maids at his home near the Indian capital Delhi, say they were starved and sexually abused by him and other Saudi nationals. India has urged Saudi Arabia to cooperate in investigations into rape allegations against a diplomat. The women returned to Nepal on 10th September 2015.
The Saudi embassy has denied the charges. The official has diplomatic immunity and is in the embassy.
Police have registered a case of rape, sodomy and illegal confinement against the official, without naming him. India’s foreign ministry called in Ambassador Saud Mohammed Alsati and sought his embassy’s cooperation “in the case of 2 Nepali citizens”.
The alleged abuse to which they were subjected took place over several months at the10th and 12th floor apartments in Gurgaon, south of Delhi.
The women were rescued from the house on Monday after a tip-off from an NGO.
” Meanwhile, women rights activists have protested outside the Saudi embassy in Delhi demanding the arrest of the accused diplomat.
“The case has put Indian diplomacy in the spotlight as the victim and the accused are of different nationalities,” The Hindu Newspaper reported. The allegations have led to a “diplomatic crisis” between India and Saudi Arabia.
India could be trapped in a major diplomatic scandal after a senior diplomat and his wife was accused of keeping two Nepalese women as sex slaves in Gurgaon. According to FIR filed by the police in Gurgaon, the two women had been lured to India with a false promise of jobs, and then sold to the diplomat, who is the first secretary at the embassy. The two women were also taken to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia for a few days. During the entire period they were allegedly raped several times and forced to perform unnatural sex for the diplomat and other Saudi nationals often at knife-point.
“Nepal has a special relationship with India, but the Indian government would rather not strain ties with Saudi Arabia where three million Indians live and work. Saudi Arabia has been India’s largest provider of oil since 2001.”