DUBAI // A bitter lover who was dumped by his girlfriend got drunk, went to her room in the middle of the night and set fire to her bed, Dubai Criminal Court has heard.
Prosecutors charged him with setting fire to an inhabited place, trespassing into a women’s-only residence, damaging a bedroom’s interior, damaging a woman’s belongings and endangering the life of a woman by setting fire to a room where she was sleeping.
The life he endangered was that of his ex-girlfriend’s room-mate, Filipina FK, 28, as his ex, KL, was working at the time.
“I didn’t know what I was doing, I was drunk,” said Indian waiter AR, 26, when he appeared in court on Tuesday morning.
Records show that the waiter’s girlfriend broke up with him shortly before the fire incident took place on October 16 last year. He admitted to prosecutors that on that night he went out with a woman to a hotel, where they consumed a lot of alcohol.
“We left this hotel and headed to another, where we had even more alcohol,” he said in records.
When he returned to his Jebel Ali accommodation, which is for employees of Fairmont The Palm hotel, he sneaked into the women’s building through the laundry room window, which he said was usually left unlocked.
He then went to the room where his ex-girlfriend lived.
There, he allegedly took a pair of shoes belonging to her, placed them on the bed then used his lighter to set them ablaze while she was sleeping.
A witness, who heard the fire alarm, said the man left the scene by jumping through the laundry-room window as the fire caught the bed, the curtain and parts of the wall.
Damage to the room was valued at Dh2,100 and Dh200 for the woman’s belongings.
The room-mate said: “I woke up at the fire alarm and, as I opened my eyes, smoke and flames were all over the room. I got so scared and ran out of the room in fear for my life.”
A verdict is expected on February 8.
salamir@thenational.ae