Saudi Arabia has secretly beheaded two Indian nationals without notifying either the embassy or the men’s relatives of the brutal executions. To add to the shock, the Kingdom will not surrender the remains to the families.

Satwinder Kumar of Hoshiarpur and Harjeet Singh of Ludhiana were decapitated on February 28, in connection with the case of the murder of another Indian man back in 2015. The verdict was reached without the knowledge of the Indian embassy and without any prior warning issued to the men’s families.

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The news of the capital punishment only surfaced after Satwinder’s wife, Seema Rani, approached the Indian government asking them to contact the Kingdom to seek clarification on her husband’s fate, after hearing rumors of his demise in a Saudi jail. This week, India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) finally confirmed the beheadings, which Punjab’s chief minister has called “barbaric and inhuman.”

“He had gone to Saudi Arabia in 2013 to work as a truck driver on a two-year contract. He was arrested in 2015 but the family came to know about his arrest several months later,” Rani said, blaming MEA for failing to intervene and prevent the executions.

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To add more to the families' shock, the MEA letter said that “under the Saudi system, the mortal remains of those who are executed are not handed over either to the embassy of that country or to the family members of the deceased.”

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