THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Escaping Saudi Arabia is not an easy task if you are accused of murder. Death penalty is the punishment for murder there. 12 Malayalees who were sentenced to death like this were rescued by Oommen Chandy when he was the leader of the opposition and when he was the chief minister.

He had the help of social workers from Saudi also. Chandy saved them by organizing the blood money and making an official intervention. He also intervened to bring the dead bodies of about 300 Malayalees back home. Oommen Chandy was a people's representative who supported the expatriates in times of distress.

When Chandy became the chief minister, Kayamkulam native Shivdas, who was part of his personal staff, was appointed by him to solve the problem among the Saudi Malayalees. He has intervened and freed many people from car accident cases where they did not have the money to pay huge sums of compensation. Those were complicated cases as well. Finally, when he became the Chief Minister, Shihab Kottukad was appointed as the Saudi consultant of Norca Roots to quickly solve the problems of expatriates.

In the case of Thomas Mathew, a native of Kottayam, who was killed in Dammam during an argument, Saudi court had awarded a death sentence to the accused, Zakir Hussain, a native of Kollam. If the death penalty had to be avoided, the family had to pardon or blood money had to be given to that family. When Zakir Hussain did not have money to pay 15 lakh blood money, Oommen Chandy got him released in 2020 by paying his own money. He had also led the collection of 50 lakh blood money to free three people in the case of the murder of a native of Kollam.