Deaths in Saudi, Qatar: Bangladeshi victims’ families get compensation

Families of two killed Bangladeshi migrant workers received compensation money Tk 2.50 crore from Saudi Arabia and Qatar today.

Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment Secretary Begum Shamsun Nahar and Wage Earners Welfare Board (WEWB) Director General Gazi Mohammad Julhas handed over the separate cheques to the victims’ families at Probashi Kalyan Bhaban in the capital this afternoon.

The wife, two sons and two daughters of Bashir Uddin, 45,  a vegetable vendor in Jeddah who had been murdered by a Saudi teenager in the city on September 11, 2010, received Tk 2.10 crore as blood money from the murderer’s family.

Later, his family filed a case with a local court in Saudi Arabia. The court last year settled the case as the murderer’s family agreed to pay the blood money to the victim’s heirs.

Blood money is an Islamic practice in regard of compensation for blood loss. It is money to be paid to the heirs of a victim.

Meanwhile, Rahmat Ali, 65, father of Rokib from Daudkandi upazila of Comilla, also received a compensation cheque worth Tk 43 lakh.

Rokib, along with six other Bangladeshis, was killed in a fire incident in Qatar in June last year.