DUBAI // A taxi driver drove a mentally impaired 18-year-old girl to a hotel and raped her after she failed to pay the fare, a court was told on Thursday.
Pakistani driver A K, 33, was sentenced to five years in jail, followed by deportation, at Dubai Criminal Court on Thursday.
The victim, who holds a Comoros Islands passport, was going from her home in Sharjah to the Burj Khalifa, in Dubai. She first took a bus and then jumped in a cab for the final leg of the journey.
When the driver found that she had no money to pay him, he took her to a room where he forced her to take off her clothes and raped her.
“He then took me in his taxi and gave me Dh50 then dropped me off somewhere I didn’t know,” the teenager said.
“He told me he will be back but he didn’t come, so I went to the nearest supermarket and called police.”
A medical report confirmed that the victim was not aware of her actions nor was she responsible for them due to a mental problem caused by a traffic incident when she was two years old.
The taxi driver had taken the girl to a hotel in Naif, Deira, after paying an employee Dh100 to arrange the room for him on November 7, 2013.
The Pakistani denied the story when he was interrogated by police and said she asked him to have sex with her.
“She got into the car and asked me to take her to a hotel — she didn’t say which hotel — then she told me that she wanted me to have sex with her, so I said OK,” he said.
He went to this particular hotel because he said he often brought them customers, so they could give him a deal.
When the hotel staff member, Bangladeshi A A, 50, asked what the room was for, A K said “because I needed to relax” but the driver claimed that A A then returned and charged him Dh10 for a condom.
The driver said that, after he and the victim had sex, he gave her Dh200 and she told him she was going to a shisha cafe. “The next morning I was arrested by police at my flat,” he said.
The cab driver was charged for raping the girl twice, while the hotel employee was charged with aiding and abetting him.
The Bangladeshi denied knowing that the driver had a girl with him when he gave him a room in a flat he manages.
“It’s not true, I gave him the room so he could take a rest, that’s what he told me he needed the room for,” he said.
“When police came to the hotel the next day, I called him and asked him on the phone if he had a woman with him when he took the room, and he said yes, so I asked him to come to the hotel but he did not.”
DNA samples taken from the girl’s body matched those of A K.
He was convicted but the hotel employee was found not guilty and was released.
salamir@thenational.ae
