DUBAI // A woman forged documents to make it appear that a newborn child was her own.
Emirati S A confessed in court, saying her only motive had been to help the biological mother, as the child was born out of wedlock.
She said she did not know the real mother, but the Omani woman had contacted her after becoming pregnant by her neighbour’s son in her homeland.
The 52-year-old Emirati woman had been seen accompanying the mother to the Iranian Hospital, near Satwa, during her pregnancy.
On April 8, 2007, the day the child was born, the documents submitted to the hospital had S A’s name in the place of the real mother.
The child was named Khalid and lived with the defendant as her own son until he was five, when the deception was discovered.
S A was referred to Dubai Criminal Court to face charges of attributing a child of others to herself and her husband, and of forging hospital documents by adding her name as the mother of the child.
She is also charged with using the birth announcement provided by the hospital to obtain an inheritance letter from an Ajman court after the death of her husband in attempt to gain an official document linking the boy to her husband.
“I just wanted to help the mother of the child,” the Emirati said in court on Wednesday.
“She called me when she was in her sixth month through someone, but I didn’t know her. She didn’t want the child and I wanted to help her.”
Records said that S A had the baby for about a year before her husband died in a road accident.
After that, she tried to obtain a birth certificate for Khalid from the Iranian Hospital. She said the hospital kept stalling for about four years.
S A went to court in Ajman with two witnesses who testified that Khalid was her son and her late husband was the father. From this, she managed to obtain a determination of inheritance certificate.
“I was then contacted by Bur Dubai police station, where I underwent a DNA test, which results showed that I wasn’t the biological mother of the child,” she said in her prosecution testimony.
S A added that the real mother had been in a relationship with her neighbour’s son in Oman and fled to the UAE to give birth.
M M, 45, an Iranian doctor, who delivered the baby by C-section, said: “The pregnant woman’s name was S A, so after the delivery, when I saw the attached copies of her marriage contract, passport and husband’s passport, I noticed that the picture was of the woman who was accompanying the pregnant lady, and I informed the hospital’s management.”
The next hearing was scheduled for February 9.
salamir@thenational.ae
