DUBAI // A seven-year-old boy stabbed a man’s finger and then threatened to “cut him again” because he was being molested, a court heard on Tuesday.
The boy said that Indian worker M M, 27, who denied sexual assault when he appeared at Dubai Criminal Court last month, pulled him to the corner of an office at his father’s company, forced him to sit on his lap and touched him.
“I told him to stop but he didn’t, so I asked two men in the office to help but they didn’t give me much attention,” said the boy, who then grabbed a paper knife off a desk and stabbed his attacker in the finger.
At this point, the Indian let go of the Pakistani boy and then M M’s two colleagues noticed something was going on. “M M came back and tried to take the blade from me. I told him I would cut him again if he touched me,” the boy said.
On the journey home with his father on October 20 last year, the boy said it was not the first time that the man had tried to touch him.
His father, R A, 39, said he took his son with him to the office with him on Mondays because his mother was away on business. “On that day he was angry as we were heading home and he asked me to beat M M because he does bad things. I asked him to explain, so he told me,” the father said.
The next day the father went to the office and checked the cameras and found evidence supporting his son’s claims.
“I saw him on camera touching my son when no one was looking. When I showed him the recordings, he was stunned because he did not know there was a camera,” the father said.
The Indian insisted he was only playing with the boy. “But I told him this was not considered play when you touch a boy like that, it’s called molestation,” R A said.
The court ruled that he deliberately touched the Pakistani boy sexually and sentenced him to six months in prison.
He will be deported after completing his jail term.
salamir@thenational.ae
Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
Some of Darwish's last words
"They see their tomorrows slipping out of their reach. And though it seems to them that everything outside this reality is heaven, yet they do not want to go to that heaven. They stay, because they are afflicted with hope." - Mahmoud Darwish, to attendees of the Palestine Festival of Literature, 2008
His life in brief: Born in a village near Galilee, he lived in exile for most of his life and started writing poetry after high school. He was arrested several times by Israel for what were deemed to be inciteful poems. Most of his work focused on the love and yearning for his homeland, and he was regarded the Palestinian poet of resistance. Over the course of his life, he published more than 30 poetry collections and books of prose, with his work translated into more than 20 languages. Many of his poems were set to music by Arab composers, most significantly Marcel Khalife. Darwish died on August 9, 2008 after undergoing heart surgery in the United States. He was later buried in Ramallah where a shrine was erected in his honour.
Schedule
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21 Lessons for the 21st Century
Yuval Noah Harari, Jonathan Cape
Benefits of first-time home buyers' scheme
- Priority access to new homes from participating developers
- Discounts on sales price of off-plan units
- Flexible payment plans from developers
- Mortgages with better interest rates, faster approval times and reduced fees
- DLD registration fee can be paid through banks or credit cards at zero interest rates
Dust and sand storms compared
Sand storm
- Particle size: Larger, heavier sand grains
- Visibility: Often dramatic with thick "walls" of sand
- Duration: Short-lived, typically localised
- Travel distance: Limited
- Source: Open desert areas with strong winds
Dust storm
- Particle size: Much finer, lightweight particles
- Visibility: Hazy skies but less intense
- Duration: Can linger for days
- Travel distance: Long-range, up to thousands of kilometres
- Source: Can be carried from distant regions
