DUBAI // An Indian man will spend five years in jail for trafficking a 15-year-old girl who was desperate to get money for life-saving surgery for her father.
The 36-year-old was convicted of human trafficking and running a brothel. Police had received a tip-off that he was offering the Pakistani teenager for sex.
On July 1 last year, the convict was arrested at a hotel room in Naif, where a policeman posed as a customer.
The girl said her mother was dead and her father needed open-heart surgery that costs more than 2 million rupees (Dh70,105).
Her cousin, a Dubai resident, had advised her to work in the UAE to earn the money.
The teenager said her cousin arranged with the convict and a suspect, who is at large, to forge a passport that said she was 23.
The girl arrived in the UAE in January and was told she would work as a waitress. But she was later persuaded to prostitute herself to make more money.
The convict will be deported after serving his sentence.
salamir@thenational.ae
