Divorced and the mother of a six-year-old daughter, Sahera Akter, 35, went to Saudi Arabia from her home in Narsingdi to work as household help.
She left in December 2017. After a month in Saudi Arabia, she died of a stroke.
The months following her death were full of agonizing grief and anxiety for her family, as it took over two months to send her body back to Bangladesh.
“We could recognize her face, but there was no hair on her head,” said Ali Hosen, Sahera’s older brother.
Sources at the Bangladesh Ministry of Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment said repatriation of bodies from Saudi Arabia takes an average of two months.
There are similar stories about other Saudi Arabian migrants.
Samsun Nahar, 37, also flew to Saudi Arabia in search of a better livelihood. After her death – which was ruled to be suicide in February this year –authorities took one and a half months to get her dead body back to Bangladesh.
Samsun’s only child, Ikramul Molla, said: “Another migrant named Sharif worked at a shop near the house where my mother worked. He said he saw my mother being taken to the hospital, but could not tell why.”
“Two days later, we came to know that she committed suicide,” he said.
By the time his mother’s body made it to Bangladesh, Ikramul said, her flesh had rotten and her face was barely recognizable.
Buried in a foreign land
Abdul Jabbar, 48, from Sylhet’s Moglabazar, worked in Riyadh. He died of natural causes in March 2019. He was buried there 16 days after his death.
When asked why his body was not repatriated, his brother-in-law Liton Ahmed said: “The body would get rotten. It would get hurt.”
Another migrant, Faruk Hosen Sardar who also died in Riyadh, was buried there as well.
Sometimes families do not want their relatives left unburied for such a long period of time. Some families want the deceased to be buried in Saudi Arabia due to religious beliefs.
Mozibor Rahman from a southwestern district of Bangladesh, died of cardiac arrest in Saudi Arabia this year.
“We were told it would take five to six months to bring the body back. We were having trouble with the matter as his Akama [work permit] had expired,” his wife said, wishing not to be named.
“Two and a half months after his death, we told [Saudi Arabian authorities] to bury my husband there,” she said.
It is not just procedural complications. Sometimes bodies do not come home due to financial considerations.
Rayhan Mridha was just a teenager when he went to work in Saudi Arabia and died there. His body never made it back home.
“We would have had to give money to Saudi Arabia to bring his body back. We are already in debt and we are still paying off the money we borrowed to send him there,” said Aminul Islam, Rayhan’s uncle.
“We still applied to bring his body back. One and a half months passed. We gave up then. The family refused to apply again,” he said.
Wage Earners’ Welfare Board Deputy Director, Zahid Anwer, said: “Regardless of how the migrants went abroad, legally or illegally, we try to bring back each and every body if the family applies for it.”
Saudi Arabia takes more time repatriating
The bodies of some 38,473 deceased migrant workers have been received since 2005, Wage Earners’ Welfare Board figures show.
But the number of deaths is believed to be higher, as the bodies of many workers never make it back to Bangladesh.
Around 3,793 dead bodies were sent to Bangladesh last year. Most of them died unnatural deaths – disease, accident, stroke, cancer, suicide, and murder are the prevalent causes.
Notably, Bangladesh sends the highest number of migrant workers to Saudi Arabia.
In 2018, Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka received some 1,113 dead bodies from Saudi Arabia, 736 from Malaysia, and 313 from Oman.
It takes more time to repatriate bodies of migrant workers from Saudi Arabia compared to other countries.
“It take two months on average, while many other countries take seven to ten days to return the body,” said Deputy Director Zahid Anwer.
He said sometimes it may take more time if it is a case of illegal immigration.
Procedural delays due to strict laws
Golam Moshi, Bangladeshi ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said: “Saudi Arabian law is very strict. It takes a lot of time to justify the body claimant, conduct an autopsy, and complete the police report.”
Apart from the procedural delays, collecting compensation from the sponsor or employer also takes time, Golam Moshi said.
If migrants work in remote areas of Saudi Arabia, the process becomes even lengthier.
Founding member and chairperson of the Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit (RMMRU), Tasneem Siddiqui, told that as most of the deaths are unnatural, it complicates the return of bodies to the home country.
Determining the deceased’s “power of attorney” – the person authorized to act for another person in specific or all legal and financial matters – in order to sanction the repatriation procedure, can add time to the process and complicate matters further.
“Sometimes the matter of ‘power of attorney’ creates a clash among family members, since that determines who will be given the money owed by the Saudi Arabian government or the organization that the deceased worked for,” Tasneem Siddiqui said.
She also said that when migrants with fake passports die, governments abroad do not want to complete the procedure and bear the cost of transporting the bodies home.
Migration expert Asif Munier said communicating with families of illegal migrants takes more time as they are not listed in the database.
“In Europe, the body handover process takes time due to procedural delays. If the migrant dies in detention, the whole process takes a long time to complete,” he said.
Munier, a former International Organization for Migration (IOM) spokesperson in Dhaka, said: “When a person dies in the Middle East, the family is entirely condemned to receive the body late.”