DUBAI // A man who molested a 10-year-old girl in a wheelchair was jailed for three months at the Dubai Criminal Court on Wednesday.
Sri Lankan F H, 29, who in February had denied sexual assault, told the court that he was trying to push her chair out of his way when he touched her accidentally.
But prosecutors said that he deliberately touched the Syrian girl’s breast and then took off his shorts to reveal himself as she was leaving a supermarket to go home with her sister.
“I didn’t touch her. She was in the wheelchair in the lift and I just wanted to move the chair from my way, but I accidentally touched her – I didn’t mean to touch her,” F H said.
The girl’s 35-year-old father, M A, said in court records that he was on his way to his job as a chef at 8.30pm on August 31 last year when his daughters told him they wanted to go to the supermarket in their building at the Greek cluster in International City.
He took them to the supermarket and then left them there to go to work. “At 9.30pm my wife called me at work and told me that one of our daughters had been molested,” said the father.
He said he called police, who checked the supermarket’s surveillance cameras, but found no evidence. “My daughter was so scared and crying after the incident that she wouldn’t leave the apartment,” he said.
The father then searched the building for the man, who his daughter said had a tattoo on one of his shoulders, but could not find him.
He also searched the following day with his daughter and, as they were about to give up, she spotted the man.
“As we took the lift, my daughter saw him and told me,” said the father, who checked the tattoo to make sure it was the same man. He then confronted him.
“He told me he was sorry, so I called police, who came and took over things from there.”
The girl told prosecutors that she screamed at the man when he touched her but then he followed her to the lift and waited until her sister had walked away before revealing himself.
“I moved my chair and looked away when he did that and I told my mother about what happened,” the girl said.
He will be deported after serving his sentence.
salamir@thenational.ae
