Taxi driver ‘raped mentally-impaired teenager in Dubai hotel’

The Pakistani taxi driver took his victim to a hotel room and raped her twice, before dropping her off at a supermarket, the criminal court has heard.

DUBAI // A taxi driver has denied raping a mentally impaired 18-year-old girl after she failed to pay him a fare.

The Dubai Criminal Court heard that on November 7 last year, the alleged victim, who holds a Comoros Islands passport, took a bus from her home in Sharjah to Dubai, then a taxi to the Burj Khalifa.

The woman had no money and told police that the driver took her to a room where he raped her.

“He then took me in his taxi and gave me Dh50 then dropped me off somewhere I didn’t know. He told me he would be back but he wasn’t so I called the police,” said the woman.

A medical report confirmed that the alleged victim was not aware of her actions because of a brain injury caused by a traffic accident when she was two years old.

Prosecutors said that the Pakistani driver A K, 33, had taken the woman to a hotel in Naif after paying a hotel employee Dh100 to arrange a room for him.

He denied her claims when interrogated by police and said she asked him to have sex with her.

“She asked me to take her to a hotel … then she told me that she wanted me to have sex with her, so I said ‘OK’,” he said.

A K said he had taken many passengers to that hotel before, so knew an employee there.

“He asked me why I needed it and I said because I needed to relax, so he gave me a nearby room, not one in the hotel,” A K said.

“The next morning I was arrested by police at my flat.”

He was charged with raping the girl, while A A, 50, the Bangladeshi hotel employee, was charged with aiding and abetting him.

The next hearing is scheduled for May 29.