300 lashes for man from Hyderabad in Saudi Arabia jail

HYDERABAD: Mohammed Mansoor Hussain from Malakpet is desperately seeking release from a Saudi prison after being sentenced to one-year jail and 300 lashes for a robbery which he has claimed he did not commit. Hussain's mother Hoor Unisa has now sent an SOS to Union external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj to get her son out of the Wadi Al Dawaser jail.

It was on August 25, 2016, that 32-year-old Hussain's life turned upside down. On the fateful day, Hussain, who has an MBA and was working as a marketing auditor for Abdel Hadi Abdallah Al Qahtani and sons Limited in Riyadh since March 2013, had gone to a bank to deposit 1,06,000 Saudi Riyal.
"When he reached the bank, two men accosted him. One pointed a weapon at him and demanded that he part with the cash bag. They took it and left in a car which had no registration number," his mother Hoor Unisa told TOI.

Hussain has claimed that his boss advised him to lodge a complaint with the local police. But when he went there they took him into custody, accusing him of the



crime instead. All these details are described in a letter that Hoor Unisa wrote to Sushma Swaraj on December 31, 2016.

"My son protested his innocence. He described how the incident took place, but the police did not believe him," Hoor Unisa told TOI, adding that in the past he had deposited even bigger amounts.
A few days ago Hoor Unisa spoke to her son in jail. "He was asked to sign the judgment copy. But he refused. He said he won't sign as he has not done anything. He is being threatened in jail," Noor Unisa said.

Hoor Unisa has six children. The eldest is a daughter and Hussain is second of five brothers. The family is now in a state of shock.
After completing his MBA, Hussain had worked in a local private company in Hyderabad for eight months before getting a job visa in Saudi Arabia. "All his papers are in order," his mother said.

"Since there was no CCTV facility in the area and no eye-witnesses, there's no way my son can prove his innocence," she said.