DUBAI // A six-month sentence given to a Pakistani worker who lured an eight-year-old girl and her little brother to play hide and seek with him and then molested her has been doubled by Dubai Court of Appeal.
The 21-year-old worker touched the girl’s chest and kissed her on the cheek and neck before he threatened to kill her if she told anyone.
He denied charges of sexual assault and issuing threats to kill at the criminal and appeals court.
“I’m not 21 years old because I faked my age to be able to get a visa to the country,” he told judges in an attempt to prove he was younger, adding that he always played hide and seek with the girl and her sibling.
On the night of August 29 last year, the Indian girl and her brother were playing inside the building where they live in Al Riffa when the man came and told them he could play hide and seek with them.
“When my brother hid, he dragged me to the staircase and touched me then kissed me, so I slapped him and walked away, but he followed me and told me he would kill me if I told anyone about what happened,” the girl said.
She returned home and sat crying in her room.
“I heard her crying so I went to her room and asked her what happened. She told me she had been molested,” said her 40-year-old accountant father.
He said that his daughter’s neck had ben bitten by the defendant. The father called police, who arrived and arrested the man.
A medical report confirmed that a bruise on the left side of her neck was consistent with her story. The worker will be deported after serving his one-year prison term.
salamir@thenational.ae