The case of the three men, who paid an agent to get employment in Yemen but were taken to Saudi Arabia instead, caused anger in Kerala.

Three men from Kerala, who filmed their brutal treatment at the hands of their Saudi Arabian employer, will return to India in the next few days, the government has said. However, the growing number of such cases is straining ties between India and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and casting a cloud over Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s planned visit to Riyadh, sources have told The Hindu.

The case of the three men, who paid an agent to get employment in Yemen but were taken to Saudi Arabia instead, caused anger in Kerala, after they sent a video of their employer brutally beating them with a wooden plank earlier this week. According to the men, who were trained as electricians, they were beaten for refusing to work in a brick factory. Chief Minister Oomen Chandy said he had taken up the case through diplomatic channels as well as through Malayali associations.

Taking a public stand in the case, in two separate tweets on Thursday, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said the government had “approached the Saudi police” for protection for the workers. “We reported this to Saudi Police. We are in touch with Indian workers. They will be back in India within a week,” she promised.

In September 2015, the government made the Saudi embassy repatriate its official, who was accused of locking up and raping and abusing his Nepali maids, often at knife-point for months before police rescued the women.

The case pitted the Indian government against the Saudi government for more than a week, as the Saudi embassy claimed diplomatic immunity for its official, and eventually India agreed to end the matter with the official being sent home.

In the same month, the video of an Indian being beaten mercilessly by a Saudi man, believed to be an engineer and supervisor, went viral over the internet, and evoked strong reactions in India.

And then in October a woman from Tamil Nadu, > Kasthuri Munirathinam, claimed her employer had chopped off her hand when she tried to escape abuse at the home where she worked. Despite strong reactions from External Affairs Minister, Sushma Swaraj, who called the incident “unacceptable”, >Saudi police officials absolved the employers in the case, and held Ms. Munirathnam “mentally unbalanced” in the case.

The case became a turning point, sources tell The Hindu, and despite the MEA making preparations for the Prime Minister’s visit to Saudi Arabia as a part of his West Asia outreach, they were asked to put it off.

“These cases are isolated, if you take into account that nearly three million Indians work in Saudi Arabia. Our diplomatic ties should not be held hostage to these cases of mistreatment, as often the fault lies with the unscrupulous Indian agents who lure workers to the Gulf on false pretences and leave them without protection,” former diplomat Talmiz Ahmad, who has served twice as Ambassador in KSA told The Hindu when asked about the diplomatic impact of the cases.

In the past month, a flurry of diplomatic activity has raised hopes in Riyadh again that the PM’s visit could be rescheduled in early 2016, perhaps in January itself. A visit by the Saudi Deputy Minister of Industries Saleh S. Al-Solani and a large delegation of the Saudi-India business council in December explored ways of increasing investment and trade opportunities, whereas India’s appointment of Mumbai police commissioner Ahmed Javed as Ambassador to KSA, a post left vacant since April 2015 are both seen as positive moves in the ties. It remains to be seen what the impact of the latest case of mistreatment will have on the Mr. Modi’s visit in 2016.