Story By: Lee Bullen, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Asia Wire Report

Video Credit: AsiaWire

This footage shows a migrant apparently used as a slave and left starving in the Saudi desert to care for 100 camels begging to go home to India to see his dying mum.

Veeraiah, who said he came from the city of Karimnagar in the southern Indian state of Telangana, claimed that his mother was on her death bed recently and that his Saudi employer would not allow him to return home to see her.

His family waited for him for two days to come back to India to perform the last rites.

Pictures Credit: AsiaWire

He added: “We are not provided food and I have been starving.”

In Veeraiah’s video, he is seen somewhere in the Saudi Arabian desert explaining that he has to care for around 100 camels on his own under harsh conditions.

He also claimed that one of the camels recently died at around 1am and “the kafil (employer) beat me up badly”.

Veeraiah said that his wife is hospitalised in India and that he fears he will not be able to get back to her.

He said: “Please help me come back to India. I’m from Karimnagar District. We are very poor, they beat us a lot. Even my mother died and I wanted to perform the final rites and they are not letting me go. 

“Please help me and take me back home. They are not even feeding me properly. My wife is in the hospital.”

According to reports, Veeraiah arrived in Saudi Arabia in 2017 via a recruitment officer who has failed to respond to the family’s many requests to speak to him.

After the worker’s video was widely shared online, former Indian minister K. T. Rama Rao contacted external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and India’s ambassador to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Navdeep Suri to help bring the man, identified as Veeraiah, back to his home country.

Suri responded to say that the Indian Embassy in Saudi Arabia had already tried to contact the worker, but he has so far failed to answer.

It is unclear whether the Indian authorities have managed to locate Veeraiah yet.

Meanwhile, the story follows claims that thousands of women have been lured to Saudi Arabia under the pretence of finding work who were later abused or even raped.

According to reports, there are over a million maids working in Saudi Arabia where many families employ foreign help.

Human rights groups said that many domestic maids work in difficult conditions, do not know Arabic and often suffer abuse by their employers.