Delivery worker to serve one year in prison for assaulting child in Dubai

Mohammed Yaseen, Staff Reporter

The Dubai Court of Appeal commuted a verdict issued by the Court of First Instance against an Asian delivery person convicted of assaulting an 8-year-old girl. The verdict has been commuted from 3 years to one year in prison to be followed by deportation.

Earlier, in February 2020, the convict, 63 , assaulted the girl after delivering a cake ordered by her grandmother to surprise the girl’s mother on her birthday.

The girl’s father said that he received a call from his daughter whom he left with her 4-year-old sister and went to buy some items, stating that a delivery worker wanted to deliver items that were not ordered by them.

He added that his daughter let the convict speak to him over the phone. The worker confirmed to the man that the items had been ordered through a smart application by his mother from her home country, in order to surprise his wife on her birthday, and the payment was made through the application by his mother too.

The man also said that his daughter told him that she had received the cake, but the delivery worker was still standing in front of the apartment door, so he asked her to give him the phone to speak to him. He asked about the reason for waiting in front of the apartment. “I just wanted to make sure that is the correct address,” the worker replied and then ended the call.

After about a minute, he was surprised by a phone call from his daughter, informing him that worker had assaulted her and fled the place.

The man asked her daughter to close the door well and then filed a complaint with the police.

In police investigations, the delivery worker who delivered the order was identified and arrested. On being grilled, he confessed to his crime.

The Court of First Instance sentenced him to 3 years in prison, and then the Court of Appeal commuted the sentence to one year in prison to be followed by deportation.

Recently, the Dubai Criminal Court sentenced three Arab women to six months in jail, to be followed by deportation, fined them Dhs5,000 and ordered the confiscation of their money.

The court also ordered that the first suspect’s son be sent to a childcare facility, after she exploited him to beg and ask financial help from passersby on the streets. The suspects and their children begged near a shopping centre in the Naif area of Dubai. An Arab employee reported to the police that a child was begging in the streets.

During interrogation, the employee said that more than once, while on his way to work, he saw a child under 8 begging. The police tracked down the child and arrested an Arab woman who turned out to be the child’s mother.