Four expatriates, three of them teachers, were briefly detained on Monday evening for giving private tuition at the Hai Al-Wazarat area in the Saudi capital.

They were later released with a warning to refrain from doing so in the future.

Expatriate teachers Mehboob Pasha and Mohammad Rifai from the south Indian states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu respectively, Tauheed Ahmad Siddiquee from the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and Leo, a bank employee in Riyadh were picked up while they were teaching students at home illegally.

Speaking to Arab News on Wednesday, the three International Indian School Riyadh (IISR) teachers said they had no idea that home tuition is illegal in the Kingdom.

“But now we will discontinue them,” one of them said. They added that the IISR administration had also asked them not to give private tuition.

They were thankful to the school public relations officer who bailed them out of police custody.

“We were released by the police after a couple of hours and reached our homes by 10:30 p.m. the same evening,” one teacher said.