Saudi Arabia to send back Indian prisoners in humanitarian move

The Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons was signed during the visit of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Saudi Arabia in 2010 during which the historic Riyadh Declaration was signed Saudi Arabia is home to around 2.8 million Indians, a large number of them working as blue collar workers.

India's Minister for Overseas Indian Affairs Vayalar Ravi had stated in the Rajya Sabha, or the upper house of the Indian parliament, last month that, of the 3,497 Indian prisoners lodged in jails in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, the maximum number of 1,400 are in Saudi Arabia.

Of these, 568 prisoners are lodged in jails in the Red Sea coast city of Jeddah.

Apart from Saudi Arabia, there are 1,025 Indian prisoners in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), around 250 in Kuwait, 106 in Oman, 76 in Bahrain and 72 in Qatar.