DUBAI // A 48-year-old shop manager has denied groping a woman as she was getting into her car at a mall.
The Turk was said to have grabbed the Austrian housewife, 40, as she loaded bags into her car.
“I wouldn’t do that,” he said at Dubai Criminal court on Monday morning.
Prosecutors said that on November 8 last year, the woman was shopping in Ibn Battuta Mall and, as she paid for items, the defendant approached her and offered to help with her bags.
“I said no to him then headed to my car and, as I was loading the items into the car, he came to me again and asked if I wanted to go out with him,” said the housewife.
She told him she was married and asked him to leave but, she said, he would not so she walked towards her driver’s seat. “The moment I was getting into the car, he groped me, so I screamed at him and he fled,” said the woman.
She told her husband about the incident and then they checked the cameras at the mall and were able to identify the man. She then reported him to police.
The defendant was apprehended and charged with sexual assault.
He denied the charge when interrogated by prosecutors and said that he only offered to help carry the bags for her, which he said is something he does with every woman.
The next hearing will be on August 11.
salamir@thenational.ae
