Dubai: A man has been accused of forging official papers claiming that his half-brother is a minor so he could sell land that they inherited from their late father.
The 43-year-old Emirati suspect was said to have visited Dubai’s Endowment and Minors’ Affairs Foundation from where he obtained documents that mentioned that his half-brother is a minor.
Then he took the documents and headed to the Land Department in Dubai where he sold the land using the documents that bore the signed approvals of his adult brothers and sisters but not that of his half-brother [who he claimed was a minor] in February 2014.
Prosecutors accused the defendant of forging official documents and using them to sell the inherited land in Al Ghusais.
The suspect entered a not guilty plea when he defended himself before the Dubai Court of First Instance on Wednesday.
“I did not forge any paper or use any forged document,” the suspect argued in courtroom three.
“At the time when you submitted the papers at the Foundation, was your brother a minor?” presiding judge Fahd Al Shamsi asked the defendant.
“I did not know if he was a minor then… I am not even sure that he is my half-brother. Until now, it has not been proven that he is my half-brother,” replied the suspect.
The 25-year-old half-brother testified to prosecutors: “I was born in India and I returned to the UAE in 2008. Since my return, I have been constantly requesting my brothers to add me to my father’s family book… they always neglected me. Once my brothers asked me to give them my written consent to sell a piece of land in Al Ghusais Area… but I refused because they failed to list me in the family book. In 2014, I knew coincidentally that the land was sold. When I visited Dubai’s Land Department to know how the land was sold, the employee at the counter told me that I was a minor [as per the document obtained from the Foundation]. When I visited the Foundation, I was told that my brother [the defendant] listed me as a minor at the time when he obtained that paper.”
An employee at the Lands Department claimed to prosecutors: “When the half-brother visited us, he told us that he became an adult in 2012. He said that he disapproved of the sale of the inherited land.”
The trial continues.