Duo clapped in irons over fatal heroin overdose

Hamza M Sengendo, Staff Reporter

Two Asian men reportedly in connection with the death of a colleague who took a heroin overdose have lost clemency pleas at the Appeals Court.

The dishwasher, 38, and driver, 35, first appeared at the Dubai Criminal Court with five other men including a jobless man, 26, and a salesman, 22, charged with being behind their colleague’s death.

The dishwasher and jobless man were given ten years and fined Dhs100,000 each plus deportation. The salesman and the driver were given five years plus deportation and a Dhs20,000 fine each.

The dishwasher was a drug dealer and the driver was a hawker. The Appeals Court has upheld the dishwasher’s punishment and also jailed the driver for ten years and a Dhs100,000 fine plus deportation.

In prosecution records, a police captain and two lieutenants said the operations room received an alert the past year that a man had consumed a narcotic drug overdose in the Discovery Gardens.

A source alerted the Dubai Police Antinarcotics Department that the dishwasher had something to do with the fatal incident. Investigations revealed he was working at a restaurant in Satwa area.

Police apprehended him there and took him to his apartment where he handed them heroin capsules that he had stashed inside a utensil placed above overhead drawers of the apartment’s kitchen.

He removed 57 capsules from his trousers and a small quantity of heroin from his wardrobe. Police checked the wardrobe and seized half a capsule and a tiny plastic bag containing heroin powder.

He revealed he purchased them at Dhs1,000 from a drug smuggler working for a trader residing abroad. The jobless man reportedly helped him pay Dhs7,100 down payment to the drug smuggler.

The dishwasher later handed him some heroin in the presence of the salesman and the victim. Both the jobless man and the salesman were reportedly the ones who handed heroin to the victim.

The jobless man told police that the dishwasher gave him two capsules to hand them to the salesman to deliver them to the victim. Police arrested the salesman at a supermarket in Jebel Ali.

He confessed to have received two capsules from the jobless man and delivered them to the victim. The smuggler had earlier smuggled in 60 capsules and sold them to the dishwasher for Dhs10,000.

The driver was arrested in Al Baraha after receiving 60 capsules from the smuggler who had brought them into the country inside his intestines. Both admitted they were going to peddle the capsules.