Dubai police officer jailed after losing appeal for fake sick note

Officer went on holiday to Thailand instead of performing duty

A Dubai police officer who used forged sick leave forms so he could go on holiday to Thailand lost his appeal on Wednesday and must serve three months in jail.

The 30-year-old Emirati paid a doctor Dh200 for each form to excuse himself from work.

He was convicted of forgery and the use of forged documents by Dubai Criminal Court and on Wednesday lost an appeal to overturn the sentence.
The incident first came to light in 2015.

He was referred to an internal police investigation for being absent several times and for submitting suspicious sick leave forms.
"We went through his sick leave notes and also checked the officer's airport entries and exits, and we found that during the period in one of the notes, he had left Dubai for Thailand," an Emirati police officer said.
The officer said the accused submitted a five-day sick note in June 2014, but it later turned out he was in Thailand for the entire week.
"Between April 30 and May 9 the same year, he had also submitted a sick leave but was found to have been outside the country as well," he said.
Police double checked all of the sick leave notes submitted by the defendant and found most of them were fake.
"We contacted him but his phone was switched off, so we had him arrested," he said.

He said the suspect admitted he would buy signed and stamped sick forms with blank names and dates and would fill them out himself.
The court was told that the notes were filled out in Arabic, rather than English, which most doctors use, which also raised suspicion.