Under Saudi Arabia’s Sharia law, the rape victim is also treated harshly under “” Hudood”” laws and sometimes subjected to punishment, if she is judged to have violated guardianship laws or purdah. The crime of rape in Saudi Arabia can attract punishment ranging from public lashings to public beheading. The Saudi diplomat must have been mindful of the fact that he did not enjoy any diplomatic immunity in his home country where stringent Sharia laws apply. The Nepali maids were taken for two weeks to Saudi Arabia, where they worked in the diplomat’s home, but were not subjected to the kind of alleged brutality while in India. This led them into the clutches of traffickers in Kathmandu and Delhi. Both maids had suffered during the massive earthquake in Nepal and were desperate to get jobs. According to the version given out by the maids during their interrogation by the police, the Saudi diplomat allegedly “”bought”” two Nepali women from an agent – basically a trafficker – to serve as maids in his home and allegedly subjected them to torture and rape, including “”unnatural”” sex, by multiple friends of the diplomat. “At a time when the Islamic State has openly instituted the practice of sexual slavery by auctioning girls and women, mostly non-Muslims in Iraq and Syria, the allegations of rape and sexual slavery against a Delhi-based diplomat of Saudi Arabia, living in a luxury flat in Gurgaon, a satellite town of Delhi, have again brought the issue of abuse of diplomatic immunity and its ramifications under intense scrutiny. Centre for Security, Strategy and Technology.

Diplomatic immunity murder rape