Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah

Monday 18 February 2013

Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah has paid blood money on behalf of an Indian driver convicted of killing nine people in a road accident in 2006. The driver, Saleem Basha, 45, has already been released from prison and is waiting to return to Bangalore, India.

Basha, who arrived in Saudi Arabia to work as a lorry driver for a brick-manufacturing unit in Wadi Al-Hajbal, near Khamis Mushait in 2004, wasted no time after his release in traveling to Makkah to perform Umrah and pray for King Abdullah. He made that trip yesterday.

On Feb. 11, 2006, the tractor-trailer Basha was driving collided with an oncoming minivan, killing eight Saudi women teachers and their Egyptian driver. Basha was found guilty of causing the accident and was ordered to pay SR 63,500 as diya (blood money) to the families of the victims. With a salary of only SR 1,200 a month, Basha was unable to come up with the sum and was sent to jail where he has spent the past seven years.
Indian community worker, Abha Ashraf Kuttichel, confirmed yesterday that Basha was released following payment of the diya. “I met with Saleem in prison and came to learn about what happened to him,” Kuttichel said.

According to Basha, one afternoon, a prison official approached him and said that King Abdullah had paid the diya on his behalf.
“I had no hope that I would ever be released from prison, but generous King Abdullah made his humanitarian gesture, so I am able to walk free,” Basha said

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