DUBAI // A desperate husband who lost his savings to a prostitute cut her throat when she would not return the money, a court heard this morning.
Prosecutors charged the 29-year-old Pakistani worker AK with the premeditated murder of SH and with theft. The Dubai Criminal Court of First Instance requested a translator so AK could be questioned.
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In his testimony, AK said he did not mean to kill SH – only scare her into giving him back his Dh6,000, which he was saving to send to his wife back home.
He said he met SH, from Uzbekistan, three months before the killing and paid her Dh100 for sex. Six days before the incident, he said he was in her studio apartment in Al Mutaina area, and she persuaded him to drink alcohol. He later had sex with her and passed out.
He woke up and returned to his room opposite the Naif Police Station, where he discovered the money was missing.
"I pleaded to her several times to return the money, but she refused and repeated to me that she had taken money from many people and never returned it," AK said in prosecution records.
So about 11am on April 28, with a 16-inch knife he had purchased at Milbar Super Market, he walked to SH's home.
"When she opened the door, she was wearing a nightgown," he said.
He said he begged her to return the money, but she refused. He them pulled out a copy of the Quran, read her some verses and explained that he was a poor man. But she knocked the book out of his hand, he said, and that infuriated him.
"I pulled her out of her gown, then grabbed her by her hair with my left hand," he said.
Prosecutors said he cut her throat three times and threw her face-down on her bed. After taking Dh200 and two mobile phones, he threw the knife in her flat and left, they said.
AK said that on his way home, he prayed at a mosque and did not feel any remorse.
"She deserved to die," he said in his testimony.
Police were notified after a friend of the SH's husband went to check on her.
"I found her door unlocked when I went to visit her after her husband called me from his country and asked me to do so," said MS, 42, a Pakistani.
Police lieutenant OT said they traced the bar code on the knife to the nearby supermarket. At the supermarket, they found footage of AK buying it.
He was arrested on about 2.30am in his room on April 30. The money and mobile phones were found with him, records show.
The date of the next hearing is yet to be determined.
salamir@thenational.ae
