Court adjourns bootleggers murder case

Mohammed Barakat, Staff Reporter

The Sharjah Criminal Court adjourned a case in which three Asian bootleggers were accused of killing a man and burying him in Al Saj’ah to May 27 to hear the testimonies of witnesses.

A policeman at Sharjah Criminal Investigation Department testified that a report from Dubai Police signified that the three defendants had been arrested for killing a man and burying him in Al Saj’ah.

The witness added that he and a team from the department visited Al Saj’ah Police Station where he enquired from the defendants about where the body had been buried.

The team members searched the places that the defendants told them about but did not find the body.

The witness said the team members talked with the defendants in their mother tongue and accompanied them several times to the area in which the body was reportedly buried but did not find the body.

The court confronted the defendants with the testimonies of the witnesses but they denied the charge levelled against them, claiming that they confessed that they committed the murder and led the police to several places where the body was buried out of fear.

Last month, a jury sentenced to 21 months in jail a man who was caught hawking alcohol in a car bearing stolen number plates who also beat up a police lieutenant.

The unemployed African defendant, 25, and two fugitive men had 32 bottles and 30 cans of alcoholic drinks for sale. They stole four number plates from two cars of an Indian businessman in Al Qusais. They fixed two of them on their getaway car and started fetching alcohol from dealers in Ajman and Ras Al Khaimah and selling it to consumers in Dubai. Police dispatched a team to intercept them on March 6.

He battered the chest and arms of the Emirati lieutenant, 25, at a Dubai street and left him with bruises on both arms and pain in his right thumb. He confessed during police and prosecution interrogations.

The Dubai Criminal Court jailed him for one year over assault on an on-duty police officer, six months for stealing number plates and three for having alcohol. He will be deported after serving the terms. In prosecution records, a source alerted the police that the two stolen number plates were fixed on a car that bootleggers were using to peddle alcohol.