Watchman molested girl, 2, prosecutors say

He is accused of sexually abusing her while her parents looked at an apartment in her building.

DUBAI // A building watchman today denied molesting a 2-year-old Jordanian girl while showing her parents an apartment for lease.

NB, 21, from India, is accused in the Dubai Criminal Court of First Instance of playing with the girl, then taking her under a staircase, undressing her and touching her inappropriately.

According to records, the girl’s parents were visiting the Plaza Residence building in Oud Metha on October 28, 2010, to see an apartment they were planning to rent.

Prosecutors said the suspect took the parents inside the apartment, and while they were looking around, taking the girl away.

He pulled down her underwear and started touching her and himself, prosecutors said. When she started crying, prosecutors said, he hit her hand.

The girl’s father, BM, 40-year-old manager at a private company, told prosecutors he noticed his daughter had disappeared. He went looking for her and found her crying, records show.

He picked her up and asked her why was she crying, and she told him, “Uncle took me up and hit me then pulled down my underwear and touched me in a bad place,” prosecutors said.

The father told prosecutors his daughter identified where she had been touched after he asked her to explain.

BM told prosecutors he calmed down his daughter, then called Al Rafaa Police Station.

"Police came in less than 15 minutes and the suspect was still disappeared,” he told prosecutors.

The man and his wife met with the police and told them what their daughter had said.

Police officers looked for the suspect and brought him in front of the father. He was nervous, records said. When the officers asked him about his whereabouts in the past half-hour, he told them he had received an important phone call from his superior, who had ordered him to go to the building's 10th floor.

Records said that when the father asked him what was he doing with his daughter, he replied, "I did not touch her," although touching had not yet been mentioned, prosecutors said.

During investigations, NB denied the charges and insisted on being on a different floor when the incident was alleged to have taken place.

MS, a corporal at the Rafaa Police station, told prosecutors that when he arrived to the building and met the child’s parents, he talked to the girl, who told him that the suspect slapped her hand. Records showed he found redness on one of her hands.

The forensic report confirmed traces of the suspect’s DNA on the girl’s underwear.

A verdict is expected on February 22.

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