Jeddah: Finally after the continuous follow up by India fraternity Forum, Three out of Four Mangaloreans who are in Jeddah Jail under STC illegal Call Routing (Hundi) case likely to be released within a month. After paying negotiated fine amount to STC, honorable judge Saad Al Garni who is chairing the probe into this case has ordered the release of these 3 prisoners. Accused Riyaz Bajpe, Fairoos Ullal and Nasir Bandar will be out from the jail soon as they are waiting to complete the release formality.
As per the complaint registered by STC telecom company in March 2003, 8 Mangaloreans had been implicated for allegedly passing and routing of illegal telephone calls and were sentenced by the court with 6.7 Million Saudi Riyals fine and imprisonment. It is also said by the family members that these unfortunate young men have been made scapegoats for others’ wrongdoings while they were unable to communicate in Arabic or English language.
India Fraternity Forum had formed an ad-hoc committee in the year 2010 for the follow up of the case. Since then IFF has been constantly in touch with Indian Consulate Jeddah and had approached lot of Indian Business men and other NRIs donors to support to raise the release fund to pay the fine imposed on these prisoners. Altaf Ullal took the responsibility to raise the required fund from the generous donors from Indian Community. He has been successful in approaching and convincing the donors to provide the financial support for these 3 young men who are likely to release next month.
IFF had appointed Lawyer Hamid Jameel to represent the accused in the court and by the release these 3 accused, IFF’s hard work is going to get paid off, however IFF done an excellent job for releasing the other four prisoners charged with the same case previously. Lawyer confirmed last accused Mohammed Shareef Kannur is also expecting to be out from the jail soon.
