Maid denies setting cupboard on fire

Ameer Al Sunni, Ehab Atta, Staff Reporters

The Fujairah Criminal Court heard a case in which a domestic worker was charged with arson.

According to the official records, the defendant, who worked in her sponsor’s house, brought a lighter and a flammable liquid on the day of the incident and set fire to a cupboard inside a room of the house causing the clothes to catch fire.

The sponsor’s wife rushed to the scene after she saw the smoke and informed her husband. The sponsor brought an extinguisher and put out the fire before it spread to the rest of the room. He then called the police, who examined the place and found the tools used in the crime. They arrested the domestic worker. She was brought to the court of law where she denied the charge levelled against her.

In another case, The Dubai Court of Appeal upheld a verdict issued by the Court of First Instance sentencing an African guard, 26, to 10 years in jail to be followed by deportation after he was convicted of stabbing his wife (aged 27) to death. The defendant was also sentenced to extra three months for attempting to commit suicide after the murder.

According to the official records and the testimony of one of the defendant’s housemates, everything was going smoothly between the defendant and his wife and they were happy about the latter’s new job opportunity.

But when the housemate left and came back he found some people gathered in front of the room where the couple lived.

When people opened the room with a spare key, they found the wife lying on the ground covered in blood and the husband sitting on the bed with traces of blood and a stab in his abdomen. There was a knife beside the defendant.

The forensic medicine report indicated that the husband held his wife firm by her neck and stabbed her several times. When she tried to escape, the defendant stabbed her again from behind and she fell dead. The defendant then stabbed himself several times until his guts got out of his abdomen but was later rescued by a surgical operation.