M’luru man languishes in Saudi jail for ‘blasphemous’ post; wife says husband ‘falsely implicated’

Mangaluru: A woman from Mangaluru has sought government intervention to facilitate the release of her husband who was arrested by the authorities in Saudi Arabia on charges of posting ‘blasphemous’ messages on social media against the king of Saudi Arabia and Islam.

The woman, Kavitha a resident of Barnakatte has alleged that her husband, Shailesh has been falsely implicated in the case and thus has appealed to the government of India to take all necessary steps for his release.

Shailesh, who has been working in Saudi Arabia for nearly 20 years was arrested in February last year.

According to Kavitha, he is being targeted for putting up a patriotic message on social media. She claimed that Shailesh had got a threat call after he posted a patriotic message on his social media account. “The caller had warned Shailesh to withdraw the social media account and if he didn’t, they wouldn’t allow him to be in Saudi Arabia. Taking no chances, Shailesh had withdrawn his account,” she said.

Later someone used Shailesh’s name to create a new Facebook profile and posted derogatory messages from this account in order to land him in trouble. “This is a conspiracy to get him arrested,” Kavitha alleged.

BJP leader Jitendra Kottari said that Shailesh is in a Saudi prison for one-and-a-half years now after the police arrested him without any investigation. The Indian organisations in Saudi Arabia are also silent on the issue, he said.

BJP MP President Nalin Kumar Kateel has written a letter to the External Affairs Ministry after being apprised of the matter. However, there has been no progress in the matter.

Earlier in August this year, Harish Bangera, who had been languishing in Saudi Prison for nearly 19 months following his arrest for an alleged provocative Facebook post against Islam’s Holy Kaaba site in Mecca and Saudi’s Prince was released by the authorities after investigations revealed that a fake Facebook profile account was created in the name of Harish Bangera and a series of derogatory comments were posted from this account.