Bangladeshi Killed in Jeddah: Family gets blood money after 6 years

Sayeed Ahmad lost his father when he was only 11.

A vegetable vendor in Jeddah, his father Bashir Uddin, the breadwinner in his family, was shot dead by a Saudi teenager over six years ago.

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Bashir's death had left his family devastated. It had no other source of income except for small farmland in Sylhet's Gowainghat upazila.

The eldest among his four siblings, Sayeed is now an HSC student at a college in Gowainghat.

“We faced hardship after the death of my father. We had to borrow money from relatives and other people to run our family,” he told The Daily Star at the city's Probashi Kalyan Bhaban yesterday.

Sayeed along with his mother, three siblings and some relatives went to Wage Earners Welfare Board (WEWB) to receive cheques for blood money.

The victim's wife and his four children were handed over five cheques amounting to Tk 2.10 crore (SR 10,00,000). The money was paid by the murderer's family as per the order of a Jeddah court.

Blood money is paid in compensation to the heirs of someone who has been killed.

As the murderer of the 45-year-old was a teenager, the court took a long time to complete the trial, said a WEWB official.

In October last year, the killer's family agreed to pay the blood money. Later, the Bangladesh consulate in Jeddah, on behalf of the family, received the money and deposited it in the account of the director general of Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training.

Begum Shamsun Nahar, expatriates welfare and overseas employment secretary, and Gazi Mohammad Julhas, director general of WEWB, handed over the cheques to the five.

MURDER, TRIAL

Victim's wife Hosne Ara Begum, 40, received a call from a Bangladeshi migrant worker in Jeddah on September 11, 2010.

She was informed that her husband was injured in an unprovoked gun attack by a Saudi Arabian citizen. Although the caller kept Bashir's death a secret, she could assume that her husband was no more.

“When we received the news that my husband was injured, we were heartbroken. We had nobody to support us,” Hosne Ara told this correspondent.

The following day, the Bangladesh consulate in Jeddah contacted her brother Faruk Ahmed, a schoolteacher, to inform him that Bashir had been killed. The victim's body arrived home from Jeddah 10 days later.

After consulting with the Bangladesh consulate officials, Faruk decided to lodge a case with a Saudi court against the teenager.

“We were frustrated at the slow progress of the trial, but our efforts did not go in vain,” he added.

Yesterday, the WEWB also handed over another cheque amounting to Tk 43 lakh to Rahmatullah, 65, father of late Rokib from Comilla's Daudkandi upazila, as compensation related to his son's death.

Rokib along with six other Bangladeshis was killed in a fire in Qatar in June last year. Their company has sent money, including insurance claims, service benefit and due wages, for the victims' heirs.

The cheques of the rest of the heirs would be given later.