New Delhi: A Sri Lankan maid has been sentenced to death by stoning in Saudi Arabia for adultery but her partner with whom she had sex with will escape death with just 100 lashes, a media report said on Saturday.


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The 45-year-old married woman has been working in Riyadh since 2013.


Her lover, also a Sri Lankan migrant and convicted in the same case, received a lighter sentence.


A Sharia court has ordered that she would be pelted with stones until death for cheating on her husband, while her lover received lesser punishment as he was single when they slept together.


Meanwhile, Sri Lanka has called on the Arab nation to pardon the woman.


Sri Lanka's Foreign Employment Bureau has hired lawyers to file an appeal in the case, the MailOnline quoted Upul Deshapriya, spokesman for the bureau, as saying.


“She has accepted the crime four times in the courts. But the Foreign Employment Bureau has hired lawyers and have appealed against the case,” Deshapriya said.


He added that the country's foreign ministry is also in touch its Saudi counterpart regarding the case on a diplomatic level.


In Saudi Arabia, adultery, drug smuggling and witchcraft are serious crimes and attract the death penalty, which is usually by stoning to death.


In 2013, another Sri Lankan maid was beheaded in Saudi Arabia for killing an infant, despite repeated appeals by Colombo against her death sentence.


Saudi Arabia is also planing to execute 55 other people convicted of terrorism. They were found guilty of killing more than 100 civilians and 71 security personnel in al-Qaeda linked attacks.