TWO years ago, Indian worker Puthen Veetil Abdul Latheef Noushad got into a fight with a Saudi national over payment.

The man later went blind, and a Saudi Arabian court ordered that Noushad's eye will be gouged out as punishment.

Now, Noushad's wife has appealed to her husband's victim to pardon him, reported AFP.

WILL OFFER ANYTHING

'I am ready to offer anything to save my husband's eye,' said Mrs Suhaila Noushad, who is living in the south Indian state of Kerala.

Though the sentence was handed out in 2003, Mrs Noushad only discovered the news on Monday when her husband called from a jail in Dammam, on the east coast of Saudi Arabia. He insists on telling his family that 'everything will be all right'.

Noushad, 32, had been working at a petrol pump since 1995.

He maintains that the Saudi man didn't lose his eyesight due to the injuries he inflicted and that he had acted only in self-defence.

Noushad told reporters that his sponsor had offered to pay 1.2 million rupees ($43,750) as monetary compensation, but his victim has so far refused to give him a pardon.

'I'm praying for the best to happen to me,' he said.

The only option for the Noushad family now is to appeal to the Saudi king for royal clemency.

'My daughter has never seen her father. (The) children always ask about him,' Mrs Noushad, who has two children aged 5 and 2, said weeping.

The Keralaites Association, a government agency looking after the welfare of migrants working in the Gulf, has asked the Indian foreign ministry to intervene.