Bid to spare eye gouging victim

2005-12-22 20:37

New Delhi - The Indian government has asked Riyadh to pardon an Indian worker whose eye is set to be gouged out as punishment by a Saudi Arabian court, a minister told parliament on Thursday.

"India has sent a mercy petition to Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and to the governor of Dammam, where worker Puthen Veetil Abdul Latheef Noushad is imprisoned," junior foreign minister E Ahamed told parliament.

The Saudi court earlier this month ordered the removal of Noushad's eye as punishment for blinding a Saudi national in 2003.

Ahamed did not say whether Riyadh had responded to India's petition for a royal pardon for Noushad.

Noushad, 32, had been working at a petrol pump in Dammam on the Saudi east coast since 1995. He had a fight with a Saudi customer over payment in April 2003 that put him in jail.

The Saudi man later lost his eyesight, but the Indian said it was not because of the injuries he inflicted, and that he had acted in self-defence.

Noushad in 2004 filed a review petition in the Saudi Court of Appeals, which can ask a victim for a pardon, but the victim has refused to settle for monetary compensation.

More than one million people from the southern Indian state of Kerala work in the Gulf countries.

- AFP